Batavia High opens fitness center, lab
Batavia High School students and staff are finally getting to enjoy some new amenities that were delayed by the construction workers' strike this summer.
The school, which is in the third year of a three-year expansion and remodel, has opened its new food laboratory classroom and a fitness center.
No one could be more thrilled about the renovated "home ec" classroom than teacher Cathy Blozis, who started her career in 1973 at Batavia High School, when the old classroom was just four years old.
"It is amazing because we have current equipment," she said, pointing to the ovens six standard, six microwave and one convection. "Which is also equipment the kids will have in their hands" at home or on jobs, she said.
The new kitchens also include a safety improvement automatic fire suppression hoods over each stovetop, just like in restaurant kitchens.
Like all other classrooms, the lab will soon have audio equipment up and running, with the teacher miked so students can hear them better. And like something off "Food Network," there is a camera suspended above the teacher's demonstration station, which will project what the teacher is doing on to a large screen.
The students moved in to the laboratory Sept. 22.
Then there is the 6,000-square-foot fitness center.
It contains 28 assisted-lift weight machines, and 16 free-weight stations. The free-weight stations are also equipped for using resistance bands and for doing exercises based on body weight, such as pull-ups. Working in pairs or small teams, the room can accommodate about 150 students a time.
Students in wheelchairs can use two accessible assisted-weight machines, as well as some free-standing stations, which brings a smile to the face of Associate Principal Chip Hickman, a former special education teacher. "I thought that was critical as we build a facility that we keep everyone in mind," he said. There are treadmills and bicycles for students who are recovering from injury.
Physical education classes will use the room, as will sports teams everyone from beginners to teens likely to play college athletics.
Track and assistant football coach Dennis Piron, who used to own a gym in downtown Batavia, was invaluable in helping design and equip the center, Hickman said.
The fitness center won't replace traditional instruction, including teaching students how to play tennis, volleyball and basketball. But they do emphasize that after high school, maintaining fitness is largely an individual matter.
"These are the machines, the gyms, the equipment you will be using the rest of your life," Hickman said.
Meanwhile...Work has resumed on building the field house and auditorium. After the construction strike ended, workers were shifted over to the food lab, special-education classroom and athletics locker room renovations, to finish those up for use this fall. (They were supposed to have been completed before school started.)It was kind of cool to see the slope graded for the auditorium floor, and imagine where the orchestra pit and first row of seats will be next fall.False20001273Batavia High School teacher Dennis Piron talks about the new fitness center at the school. Piron teaches math and also coaches track and football, and helped pick equipment for the center.Christopher Hankins | Staff PhotographerFalse