Lee Pulaski, lpulaski@wolfrivermedia.com
Leader Photo by Lee Pulaski A library with a new facelift greeted Shawano Community Middle School students this week. The $125,000 project included new carpet, paint, bookshelves, furniture and a dropped ceiling that will reduce the noise level in the room.
Leader Photo by Lee Pulaski Sixth-grade student Emily Knope studies in the SCMS library Wednesday. The new layout provides plenty of room to accommodate students doing research or studying.
Books are still being unpacked, but for all intents and purposes, Shawano Community Middle School’s library is open again.
The summer renovation project finished last week with new amenities. The work was long overdue, according to Jeff Easter, Shawano School District’s maintenance director.
“I went to the district library director and told her I wanted to replace the paint and the carpeting in the library this summer and asked her what else I could do during the process,” Easter said. “I knew we were going to have to pull all the bookshelves out and stuff.”
At that point, Easter and Kristine Bogacz, the district’s library and media specialist, went through all the library’s needs and came up with a project to take to the Shawano School Board. The library renovation came in at about $125,000.
“Aside from updating everything, we put a dropped ceiling in, which actually lowers the noise level,” Easter said. “There’s new lighting so everything is nice and bright, new paint, new flooring and a new display case in front.”
The layout of the library has also changed. Previously, computer stations were in the middle of the library, requiring people going from one end of the library to the other to go around the table. Now, new tables with power outlets are set up in a corner of the library.
One part of the project yet to be completed is an anti-theft system to prevent students from taking books out of the library without checking out, Easter said.
The changes at the library come on the heels of a major SCMS renovation in 2016, which cost $9.25 million in borrowed funds approved through a referendum in November 2015. The library wasn’t included in the main project, Easter said, because the library space would be needed to store items from other areas being renovated, and the price tag for the library would have put the 2016 renovation over budget.
“We barely had the time to do everything else (in 2016),” Easter said. “To add the library in would have been a mess. It was one of those things we knew we wanted to get to, though.”
Easter expects the renovations to last at least 20 years. He expects the library to be the last major project the district has to tackle for a long time.
“The middle school was lagging behind all the other buildings in the district, and now we’ve caught up,” he said. “The library was the last big piece.”