Batavia High School almost fully ready for students

Batavia High School is mostly ready for school to start Wednesday, despite renovation delays caused by a construction workers' strike in July.

But for the first week of school, sweaty students won't be able to take a shower after gym class. And students taking foods classes will focus on book learning while the laboratory kitchens are being installed.

"We have done everything to open with everything we intended," said Pat Browne, director of buildings and grounds.

Browne said showers in the physical education locker rooms aren't complete. Neither are the nine kitchen stations in the foods classroom. He expects the kitchens to be finished no later than Sept. 9.

Work at the high school came to a halt for a few days during a Chicago-area strike in July by operating engineers and laborers. The laborers' union, which wasn't then employed at the site, picketed the general contractor for the school project. Unionized members of other trades were allowed to work at the site by entering a designated "neutral" entrance. But a dispute about whether employees of the general contractor also used that entrance led the laborers to picket there, and the other tradesmen refused then to cross the picket line.

After the strike ended, manpower was beefed up and the school district mandated that the contractor focus first on the interior renovations to the school. "We pulled as many resources as we could from the P.E. center and auditorium," Browne said, because those projects aren't due to be finished this school year.

Physical education students will be able to use the changing area. And the sports locker rooms are fully equipped.

Other areas renovated this summer included the main gymnasium and classrooms to be used for special education.

The school is entering the third and final year of expansion and renovation.