Winter break moving time for Kramer staff

Students will report to new school Jan. 9.

Winter break for Talawanda Local Schools will be moving week for many teachers and staff members.

The Oxford school district received the keys to its new Kramer Elementary building on Dec. 9, with construction work “substantially complete,” according to Treasurer Mike Davis.

While the first day for students at the new school won’t be until Jan. 9, staff are beginning to move inside their new space.

“Anything we want to put in the building, we can put in the building, with the exception of students. Students are our most important ingredient,” Davis said.

The new building will have 70,000 square feet of space, about 10,000 more than the current building.

The state is paying $11,482,522.92 of the cost, with the district paying $5,604,824.48 for a total cost of $17,087,347.40.

The new building is also energy-efficient and will save taxpayers money, according to district officials.

Duke Energy has paid $63,840 to the district as a rebate for installing energy-efficient LED lighting throughout the building. That left the project with a cost of $28,500 for lighting, but the expected savings payback will come in six years with the LED lights projected to last 20 years, Davis said.

Winter break for Kramer Elementary students began one day earlier than for other district students and will start two days later to allow staff extra time to set up the school to be ready for the Jan. 9 arrival of students.

The overall move will be relatively small because very few pieces of furniture from the old building are being moved. Classroom desks and chairs, furniture for several hallway break-out areas as well as furniture in the administrative offices was already in place during a recent tour given by principal Jason Merz to staff and students.

Even the teachers’ name plaques on hallway walls outside their classrooms were already in place.

The school’s media center was scheduled to begin moving into its new space Dec. 14 for a head start on setting up hundreds of books.

Things not yet completed by Dec. 9 were small details in a variety of areas.

Probably the biggest piece of the puzzle still needing to be completed was installation of a dishwasher in the kitchen.

The dishwasher from the old Kramer building will be one of the few things to be moved to the new school because it is only one year old.

“The old one was original to the building. Dishwashers are supposed to have a 20-year life and we made it last 50 years,” Davis said, adding it finally gave out last year and it was decided to replace it. The cost of a new dishwasher is $17,000, so the current one is being moved.

“They will brown-bag it for lunch after the 19th. We saved the taxpayers money,” Davis said.

The kitchen, therefore, is still subject to final inspections by the city and Board of Health.

On the second floor of the building, Davis pointed to raised areas on the seams of some of the tiles, where the glue accumulated and did not allow them to lie completely flat. The installer will use a 100-pound roller over the winter break to attempt to smooth those out. Because the building has a warranty period, if rolling over the tiles does not fix the problem, they may have to be replaced next summer.

During the Dec. 9 tour, Mike Witt from Heapy Engineering was found reviewing building energy service and looking ahead to an early-morning thermal imaging review of the exterior of the building.

“It’s like a camera we use around the outside to find electrical faults — bad connections and overloaded circuits,” Witt said. “Anything that can be detected by temperature.”

He explained he planned to do it at 3 a.m. one morning this past week and said doing it in the dark and in cold weather provided good contrast for images of where heat is escaping from the building at unusual levels.

“We do scans of data centers,” Witt said, adding those will show areas where computers are not being properly cooled. “It is, literally, an endless technology.”

Families are invited to a Family Walk-Through of the new Kramer Elementary from 3 to 5 p.m. Jan. 6. For more information, contact the main office at 513-273-3500.

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