With the increasing number of students enrolling each year, Archbishop Paul Coakley approved the decision to add a new addition onto the school building as well as make renovations to existing parts of the school.
The construction is being funded by a Capital Campaign, which celebrates the 75th anniversary of the school. The campaign was initially meant to raise $6 million to fund a new addition to the school building along with additional scholarship funds.
“When we first started, we were going to raise $3 million for a building and then $3 million to grow our scholarship campaign,” Director of Advancement Mary Joyce said. “The building cost went through the roof during that time, so our $3 million campaign for the building has now turned into a $5 million campaign for the building.”
The addition will be connected to the rest of the school through the breezeway next to the theology wing, which will end up being an enclosed hallway.
“The new wing will be five classrooms, another lecture hall, restrooms and then all of our advancement offices,” Principal David Morton said.
Morton explained that the new classrooms will be a bit larger than most other classrooms in the school, but he is not sure what departments will occupy them yet. He said the expansion will allow them to remove the portable classrooms at the north end as well as provide space for teachers who do not currently occupy a classroom.
“We hope we’re done by mid September,” Morton said.
So far, the construction crew has installed plumbing and poured the foundation for the building.
“You’re going to start seeing steel go up, and so you begin to see basically the shell or the structure frame; then, once that happens, things start to happen pretty quick,” Morton said.
Along with the new addition, renovations will be made in the basement to create a more secure tornado shelter.
“When we started doing the building and submitted our plans and everything to the city, they told us our tornado shelter was no longer in code,” Joyce said.
Joyce explained that this summer they aim to add more secure walls and better ventilation to the basement in case of a tornado.
The advancement offices will be moved upstairs to accommodate growth of the counseling department as the student body gets larger.
“With counseling right now we just don’t think it’s good to have a lot of parent traffic down with advancement and a lot of student traffic down there with counseling,” Morton said. “We’d like to separate those.”
With the advancement department in the basement, many donors have to walk through the counseling department for meetings, which does not allow a lot of privacy for students.
“It’s hard for my donors to come down in the middle of the kids who need to get into a counselor,” Joyce said. “With the needs of the counselors, we needed to separate advancement.”
Joyce explained that the advancement department would separate from the rest of the school to make sure students are safe.
“The advancement offices will be walled off,” Joyce said. “There’ll be a door there you can go in and out of, but it’ll also be locked as well. So if we do have guests who come in and stuff, they will have access.”
Today, the construction crew started installing steel for the framework of the building.
