Scott Williams, swilliams@wolfrivermedia.com
Leader Photo by Scott Williams Krisy Bogacz, library director for the Shawano School District, adjusts books on a shelf in the Shawano Community Middle School library.
Leader Photo by Scott Williams With a modernization coming this summer, some areas of the Shawano Community Middle School library are believed to be unchanged over the past 40 or 50 years.
The library at Shawano Community Middle School is about to get its due.
It is one of the few areas of the middle school that were left untouched by a $10 million renovation completed last year following a successful referendum.
School officials now have identified funding for improvements planned this summer to equip the library with new shelving, furnishings, equipment, lighting and more.
“It’s going to be much more of a modern library,” Principal Mary Kramer said.
School board members have agreed to spend up to $123,000 on the project, which will upgrade the library to match improvements made throughout the rest of the middle school last year.
Jeff Easter, the school district’s director of buildings and grounds, said some board members have questioned why the library was not included in the $10 million package approved by voters in November 2015.
Not only would that have driven up the price tag on the referendum and jeopardized the schedule for getting the project done on time, Easter said, it would have meant that the library was not available as a valuable space for storage during remodeling work elsewhere in the building.
“It was very helpful to not be messing around in there,” he said.
The referendum effort modernized the middle school, 1050 S. Union St., with a new main entrance, an enlarged cafeteria, new gymnasium locker rooms, an updated kitchen, a new heating system, and improved band and orchestra rooms, along with other improvements. Work was completed last fall, just before the school year started.
Easter later approached the library staff about some cosmetic touch-ups, and the plans grew from there.
Krisy Bogacz, the school district’s library director, said the middle school students need a library with suitable instructional space and modern facilities that inspire them to spend time in the library reading, thinking and interacting.
Bogacz said much of the existing library probably has been unchanged for the past 40 or 50 years.
“We’re teaching and we’re learning differently,” she said, “and this library kind of needs to evolve with that.”
In addition to such cosmetic improvements as new carpeting, painting, doors and lighting, the plans call for removing offices to create more open space, reconfiguring the layout, replacing bookshelves, acquiring new work-friendly furniture and installing inventory-control equipment.
Easter said although the footprint will not change, the remodeling will have a dramatic effect.
“It’s going to seem a lot bigger,” he said.
Work is scheduled to be completed over the summer, so that students and staff can enjoy the new library with the start of the 2017-18 school year. The middle school serves about 500 students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
School board members set the budget at $123,000 using funds from the district’s $27 million-a-year budget.
Easter said he has approached some contractors already, but he also is hoping to save money by performing much of the work with in-house staff.
Bogacz said she is confident that the library will undergo a significant transformation, even with the spending limits.
“We’re going to think creatively enough to get our teaching and learning goals met,” she said. “I’m very excited about the changes.”
