Grand Island High School targeted for majority of capital project funds

by Larry Austin
Grand Island Dispatch, October 23, 2009

Grand Island High School Principal Sandra Anzalone warns those taking a tour of the high school that they are about to enter the boys football team room. She covers her mouth and nose with her hand. The room has no ventilation as is soon painfully obvious to tour attendees.

The team room stop was one on an Oct. 14 tour of the school provided to residents in the days leading up to the district’s capital project referendum. Ventilation of the team room is one of the costs included in the Grand Island Central School District’s proposed $47 million capital project, of which $34 million is earmarked for work at the high school. The vote is Tuesday, Nov. 17, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the high school gym.

Another tour is scheduled Saturday, Oct. 24 at 9:30 a.m.

But ventilation in the team room is one small project on a long laundry list of needs, according to the school district administration. During the tour, Anzalone noted:

•The technology program has grown from 60 students to 360, but the available classroom space is scarcely keeping up pace. “We’ve gone from one room to two rooms to three rooms,” she said. “Storage is a big problem for us.”

Superintendent Robert Christmann noted that the students building a trebuchet for a competition last weekend in Clarence had to remove ceiling tiles to fit their project in the room.

•The auditorium still has its original seats with very few handicapped accessible seats.

•The acoustics in the library prevent multiple groups of students to work without distraction.

“I would just like to be able to put at least 100 kids into a library at one time. You figure it’s 10 percent of your population that could utilize a library/media center. That to me would be minimal,” Anzalone said. “And I can’t put more than 30 in here at one time.”

•The guidance center has no room for a career center.

•The bathrooms are not handicapped accessible.

“Somebody’s mother is probably on the walls,” Anzalone said of the graffiti on the original marble in the bathrooms.

There are about 1,120 students at GIHS. “We’ve outgrown our school,” Anzalone said, but the demand for more space is not based solely on student population. The requirements for students in terms of coursework have increased dramatically since 1963 when the school was built, Christmann said.

“It’s not just bodies, it’s courses,” he said.

Science and technology would receive a major boost with the construction of a new wing, should the voters approve the project in the November referendum.

A typical graduate in 1965 could take one health class and one biology, Anzalone said, whereas all students must take three sciences, two of them with a lab, today.

“You only really needed to take one science course to graduate with a regular diploma in 1965,” she said.

“There weren’t any computers, there wasn’t special ed.,” Anzalone said. “You’ve got the same number of kids perhaps, but you’ve got so many more requirements for a New York state diploma.”