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www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday January 31, 2009 - 5 St. Thomas students moving into portable classrooms By Tina Depko OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Besides new classes, students at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School will also have to get used to new classrooms at the start of their semester on Monday. That is when 24 portables on school grounds are scheduled to come into use as classrooms, as the three-story section of the school will be closed in preparation for demolition. Giacomo Corbacio, superintendent of facility management services, said he expects it will be a smooth transition for students and staff. "Portables are part of school infrastructure these days," said Corbacio. "All the portables are fully air conditioned, they have their own heating system, they are fully alarmed and they are modern buildings. They are very suitable accommodations. And they are all new portables." This is one of the first major steps in the construction of a new St. Thomas Aquinas school, which will be built on the same site. The three-story, $32 million facility is slated to open Sept. 2010. Students and staff will have to be patient, as the short-term pain will mean long-term gain, Corbacio said. "Patience will be required over the next year and a half and then we'll be ready to go," he said. "The staff at the school under the leadership of Principal Pat Daly has been very helpful and it is going to be a very good learning environment and we're doing a lot of things to accommodate that learning environment." A major hurdle facing the project is approval from the Town's Site Plan Committee. Corbacio was banking on this to happen at the committee's Jan. 20 meeting, but ongoing talks between the Town and the board has delayed the expected approval date to Feb. 17. "We're not as far ahead as we'd like to be, but we'll be taking action to get us back ready for Sept. 2010," he said. "We always want to stay ahead and plan everything in advance, but the Town has been very cooperative and have been responding to our needs. Each time we submit something, something new comes up from a different agency or department that has a question or two, so we have to respond. So, they want to make sure things are 100 per cent complete, all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed before it goes to a site plan meeting." Corbacio said that as much work is being done as possible in anticipation of that approval so that the Sept. 2010 opening date will be met. However, the exterior of the school will likely not be completed until spring 2011. "We're still moving ahead with the design drawings and the detail drawings, so things are happening in parallel," he said. The board has applied for four building permits to expedite as much work as possible while waiting for the site plan application approval. These permits are for internal classroom alterations and construction of new rooms, such as the main office; the occupancy of the portable classrooms by students; front door access entry/exit alterations on the Dorval Drive side of the building and disconnecting and reworking the electrical and mechanical services to separate the three-story building from the two-story building; and demolition of the three-story part of the building. The first two permits have been issued by the Town. It is now a waiting game for the remaining two. "The demolition will probably be done February or early March," Corbacio said. 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