Pioneer HS gets ready for summer construction

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 | Source: Concentrate

When the students leave Pioneer High School in mid June look for the construction workers to move in to improve the back half of high school on the city's west side.

The $1.7 million project will create a student courtyard behind the school in an open area that currently serves as the home to more than a dozen portable classrooms. It will also improve the school's tunnel system, expand its culinary arts classroom space, add space for special education and do away with the 16 portable classrooms.

Those portable classroom have been a fixture at the high school for more than 25 years as the Ann Arbor Public Schools District has worked to deal with its growth. The removal of the units will once bring all of Pioneer's classroom teaching back into the main building.

"There are a lot of them," says Amy Osinski, spokeswoman for Ann Arbor Public Schools. "It's like portable city."

Most of the work will be done in time for the next school year in late August. The student courtyard construction will probably continue through early fall before opening before the weather turns cold in October.

The project is paid for by money raised in a 2004 bond proposal that calls for improving Pioneer High School. The school opened in the early 1950s on a huge parcel of land bordered by Seventh Street, Stadium Boulevard, Main Street and Scio Church Street. It has been renovated and added on a number of times since then. It has been 20 years since the last major renovation. The opening of Skyline High School allowed the school district to redevelop Pioneer High School.

Source: Amy Osinski, spokeswoman for Ann Arbor Public Schools
Writer: Jon Zemke