With middle school re-roofed, Board of Ed. turns to Wantage School

Sussex-Wantage - Before getting started with repairs to schools in the Sussex-Wantage School District, the board of education wants to have the experts take a good, hard look at the plumbing, electrical system, and the boilers. The infrastructure examination will cost $10,000, but School Board President Arthur Jacobs says he and other board members think it is money well spent. “Before we get started on a program of renovations and repairs,” Jacobs said, “we need to know what needs to be replaced and what can be repaired.” Meanwhile, with the help of the Wantage Township Department of Public Works, the schools are getting a thorough sprucing up. Jacobs said that the township had been generous in repairing potholes in the school’s parking lot and resurfacing the black top. The town also graded and restored the stone surface of the parking lot behind the Wantage School on Route 23. Wantage administrator Jim Doherty said that he thought that helping the schools was in everyone’s best interests, including those of the taxpayers. Board member Ann Smulewicz said that she had been especially impressed when walking through the halls in the Wantage School. “The school used to look drab and unattractive, but when I walked through last week, I saw that the hallway floors were clean, shiny and attractive, and the lights were bright,” she said. Smulewicz also mentioned that Mayor Jeffrey Parrott, had told her that he was very impressed with the landscaping at all the schools. “We’ll want to be sure to thank Mayor Parrott for giving the school some topsoil and grass seeds to enhance the appearance of these grounds,” Smulewicz added. At the Wantage School, the main section of the building and the hallways have been painted. Outdoors, the flowerbeds are filled with red salvia, rosy geraniums, snapdragons, and a collection of herbs including sage and basil. Sunflowers planted by the students are blooming along the sides of the building. The Wantage School, built to replace 10 one-room schoolhouses, is something of an architectural gem, and exemplifies a style that might be known as “school house federal.” What’s more, the building itself is a lesson in 20th century American history, having been built in 1937 with a Work Projects Administration (WPA) grant of $81,000, explained school historian and fifth grade teacher Allen Terwilliger. The WPA was a U.S. government agency established in 1935 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to put people back to work during the Great Depression. The agency was designed to help citizens who were on relief by employing them to work on public projects, such as the building of schoolhouses, bridges, and roads. Many public buildings, most notably post offices, still fascinate people with spectacular murals depicting local scenes, especially of people at work. The WPA employed some 8.5 million persons before being abolished in 1943. Repairing the original slate roof is a challenge the board of education now is preparing to take on, and the board president said that a specialist in slate roof restoration had been called in to examine the roof and provide an estimate. The boilers, originally fueled by coal and later converted to oil, also are on the list to be replaced with new, efficient boilers. “The coal bin is still in the basement,” Terwilliger explained, adding that although the school still has the original oak sliding doors in some of the classrooms and the original slate blackboards, it has undergone other modernizations, including the addition of modern thermal windowpanes. “They aren’t nearly as pretty as the original windows, which had two sets of 12-pane sections. But they do keep the drafts out,” he said.