Tippy Valley Gets Update On Softball, HVAC Projects
Posted
Jackie Gorski-
AKRON – Tippecanoe Valley School Board was updated Monday on the softball facility project, as well as the high school’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning project. Since January’s school board meeting, Jim Mitterling, project manager for the softball facility project, said the masons have completed the masonry on the softball facility, even powerwashing the exterior of it and scraping the inside block work and filling in any holes. Work that has been done includes the roof framing and the deck being put on, Mitterling said. The steel doors have been put on the outside, and the electrical work and plumbing continues on the inside. The sanitation work still needs to be worked on, he said. “Fortunately, we’ve had some nicer weather to keep moving on it,” Mitterling said. School Corporation Director of Maintenance Todd Glenn updated the school board on the high school’s HVAC system, which will be replaced. “For years, we’ve been having issues with the high school’s chiller system,” Glenn said. There’s constant repairs on the system. “It’s gotten to the point where we’ve reached the end on the system.” An electrical anonymity, whether it be an electrical strike or something else, wiped out the computer side of the chiller system, Glenn said. At this point, they’re looking at $23,000 worth of repairs. He said it’s better to replace not only the chiller system, but the rest of the HVAC system as the cooling system is the original system from the 1970s. The pumps to the cooling system are all original. “It’s time to upgrade,” he said. The new system will be a 200-ton air-cooled frame chiller/remote heat exchanger. There will be new chilled water pumps with variable frequency drives. Glenn said they are planning on being operational for the 2020 cooling season this upcoming spring and the contractor will be Havel out of Fort Wayne. The board also approved additions/revisions to the school board policy. One of the revisions dealt with staff evaluations. The policy had stated one-third of the staff would be evaluated each year, but now it will be every year. This reflects what’s been going on in the school corporation, Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation Superintendent Blaine Conley said, as the staff had been evaluated on a yearly basis for the past few years. Another addition is a alcohol and controlled substance testing policy for commercial driver’s license employees, which is a federal mandate. “It’s a clearing house that checks drivers from out of state so we can see if there’s any violations on their license that comes from another state,” Conley said. Another addition approved was putting a metal detector in each school. Conley said this came from the Indiana School Board Association. The board also approved a 2020 census resolution. It stated the school board would support the census and its distribution.
