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Board explores possible funding

By Angie Santello 4 min read

The Uniontown Area School Board may be able to save the taxpayers from funding a portion of a $43 million renovation/construction project to the Uniontown High School by seeking help from foundations willing to supply the funds. Director Ronald Machesky told the board Tuesday he met with two foundations that are interested in funding the project because of the county’s interest in spurring economic development, witnessed with the revitalization of downtown Uniontown.

The catch is that the foundations want to see cutting-edge educational facilities or what some project officials say would be called a “curriculum change.”

“(The foundations) are big on Fayette County and seeing this building set up for the future,” Machesky said. “They’re on the cutting-edge of newer education.

“This funding could help make it easier on our taxpayers,” he added.

Director Ken Meadows agreed. He said the state government is focusing on restructuring high schools.

“The face of high school education needs to change,” Meadows said. “There is opportunity through foundations to upgrade and build for the future. We need to have a high school to face these challenges and not be stuck in the cookie-cutter building type structure we have had.”

Machesky added, “We were getting input into how it was now, instead of how we want it to be in the future.” The board focused on the number of English and math classes for example, he said.

“From the plans, the building is set up on what we’re currently teaching. The new building should be more for the future, for what we’re going to need 10 or 20 years out,” Machesky said.

He said Laurel Highlands and Brownsville school districts are looking into similar programs.

The renovations call for 107,000 square feet or nearly half of the high school to be remodeled, while the other half, from the auditorium to the end of the school in the direction of Uniontown, would be torn down and replaced. A 10,000-square-foot addition will be added, said Mark Altman of Altman & Altman Architects in Uniontown.

The new high school will be about one-third larger than the existing structure, Altman added.

Total cost of the project is $43 million with $36 million in construction costs and the additional dollars in fees for architects’ pay, financing, maintenance and other costs.

During construction, students will be shuffled from one part of the building to the other for classes, but will not have to leave the building, Altman said.

Director Dorothy Grahek told Machesky that his proposal is for an academic vocational-technical school, which the Fayette County Area Vocational-Technical School is working to expand on.

“For so many years, the vo-tech has been a dumping ground for lower-end students,” she said. “We want to recruit the academic students.”

The board also questioned Altman, architect for the Marclay elementary school project, and Sam Denney, construction manager for the project, about a recent zoning hearing board meeting in Henry Clay Township.

Denney called it an “honest mistake” that the project officials didn’t secure a building permit for the project.

“The contractor applied in February for the building permit,” Denney said. “The county said you need a zoning thing and it sat.”

But he said that was just part of the reason.

“We made a mistake from day one,” he said.

Machesky said, “Let’s try to not have any of these costly mistakes. If they (the zoning hearing board) wanted to be hard about it, they could tell you to move your building.”

Denney said 34 percent of the $4 million set aside for the project has been spent and the shell of the building is 90 percent complete with some shingle and brick work remaining. The project began in March, and children will not be attending the new school this coming year.

Denney said he is hopeful that the building will be approved.

In the meantime, he said project officials are in talks with safety officials about the safety of the building after the zoning hearing board issued a recommendation to do so.

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