By Ashley McCarty-
The Adams County Christian School is currently undergoing improvements as the parking lot is asphalted and renovations take place within and around the facility.
The renovations began in April of this year and are suspected to be completed by Aug. 24.
The parking lot project, which will include asphalting the current lot, and adding an additional 60 x 200 gravel lot, was privately donated specifically for the project. The school also self-funded and underwent some water pipe repair with the help of water operators Kevin Mason and Joe Casteel.
“For the parking lot project that we have completed right now, those are funds that we had available at the school. A lot of our — donation wise, we’re really dependent on churches, a lot of local people donate on a monthly basis to support us. So this project, because my husband happens to be a water operator, we were able to keep the cost pretty low. We just — all said and done, I haven’t seen the final figures, we ended up having to rent the equipment a little bit longer, but it’s going to run us about $5,000 to have replaced 300 feet of water pipe, and we’ve put in curb stops,” said ACCS Administrator Amy Mason.
Last year in January, the school had to be closed because the pipes had busted.
“We had to shut down school for a day, because we didn’t have any facilities until we could get it repaired. So this way, we have all of it separated from the building and the gym, so if anything were to happen like that again, we would always have at least one building and facilities so we wouldn’t have to cancel school basically, in the future,” said Mason.
The parking lot project is being completed by Brown County Construction of Aberdeen.
Inside the facility, new flooring for the main hallway, as well as six classrooms will be installed; those classrooms will also be receiving new paint. These renovations were budgeted, as well as funded by donations.
“We had — I believe it’s Wrightsville Church — they gave specifically for just flooring this summer. We had another church, Tranquility Community Church, who had donated and supported the initial — back in 1995 — they supported the second grade classroom, and they just recently supported it this year and gave us $1,000 to upgrade that entire classroom, put new flooring and new paint in. So, we’ve just had a lot of different donors that have come in for these projects, and donations,” said Mason.
Mason said the donations this year have been a huge blessing.
“That has been huge in being able to fund some of these projects that have been needed to be done for quite a long time,” said Mason.
Mason was hired three years ago in June. According to Mason, since then, every room has been renovated to some extent.
“The building was, you know, times were tight previous to my administration. Things had just really been let go on a lot of levels, and so we’ve been able to — every room will have had new flooring in the last couple years, or new paint, or some kind of renovation to upgrade it, besides the fact that we’ve been able to use our state funding,” said Mason.
The all-new motorized bleachers that the school received a $40,000 safety grant for through the Bureau of Worker’s Compensation in December 2019 were also recently installed in the gymnasium.
“The bleachers we had in previously were used when we bought them and put them in 15 years ago, so just from a safety standpoint, to be able to use more of the gym, because during the week when you have students, those can all be pushed in by the push of a button, and we have more access to space in the gym,” said Mason.
Additional projects planned for this summer will include tiling under the aforementioned bleachers, and insetting games in the tiles such as hopscotch and Four-Square.
“Different things for kids who — the little ones, especially, they’re not — their world doesn’t revolve around basketball like the older kids, so give them other things to do in the gym that’s outside of the basketball court where they can still have fun,” said Mason.
While questionable how it’s going to work with COVID-19, Mason is optimistic that school will, eventually, go back to normal.
“But, you know, our plans are, COVID’s going to be around for a time, but not forever. Eventually, we’ll be back into what we consider normal school, and so all of the renovations and plans that we’ve been doing this summer’s along that line,” said Mason.
Currently, 125 students have been enrolled to ACCS for the 2020-21 school year.