Big blue fences currently surround the newly implemented CTE (Career Technical Education) building construction site near the pool area. The buildings are being constructed to support Westview’s engineering CTE courses such as Introduction to Engineering Design, Honors Principles of Engineering, Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Digital Electronics, and robotics program. The buildings will house three classrooms, a fabrication shop, and several outdoor work areas. Balfour Beatty, the construction company working to erect the buildings, set up the fences and trailers three weeks ago to start the process.
Gordon Stanley, the project executive, said that the initial steps include saw-cutting, demolition, over-excavation, grading the building pad, installing underground piping and conduit and installing the building foundation footings — all crucial parts ensuring that the team will be able to start the actual walls by early March. But first, the crew must cut the concrete to make room for utilities like sewer and water. Then they will begin over-excavation, where the existing soil will be removed to a certain depth and then new soil will be placed in and compacted to the specific compaction requirement. This makes sure that the building has a stable graded pad to be built upon.
After that, the team will receive shipments of CMU (concrete masonry unit) or blocks, to begin the walls. Stanley said that the walls are projected to be finished by the end of March or early April.
“The building is CMU construction, concrete mastery units, pretty much like big bricks in layman’s terms,” Stanley said. “The initial few courses of them will start in January and then the concrete slab gets poured and then the masonry walls go up to where you start seeing them.”
Stanley said he is excited to see these plans come to life.
“When we’re finished with it, seeing the kids go into the new building [will be a] satisfying moment where [we will think], ‘wow, look at what we built and look at all these kids that are gonna be able to learn and enjoy it for many years to come,’” Stanley said.
Balfour Beatty built Westview’s campus back in 2002.
“It’s cool to be able to come back to a school we originally built and add on to it,” Stanley said. “We did the same at Del Norte. We added a couple of new buildings there a couple of years ago. It was cool to go back and continue to support the district.”
Stanley says that he is glad that schools are putting resources into their CTE programs. The construction is being funded by the Mello-Roos taxes, so it doesn’t affect the district’s overall budget at all. Mello- Roos taxes come out of parents in the district’s taxes to finance local infrastructure. Principal Ernie Remillard says that Westview’s Engineering program has had considerable growth in the last couple years, allowing the Mello-Roos funding to be put towards Westview Engineering.
“I think it’s important for districts to rev those programs back up and to see it happening here is really cool,” Stanley said. “In the construction field alone, we need more CTE-type students to bring into our profession. So it’s cool to see that potential full circle in that we’re building the building and then maybe some of the students that are learning and developing in these classrooms end up working for us some day.”
