TVS honors history of school in project

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WEST ALEXANDRIA — Twin Valley Community Local School officials have been working hard over the last year to make significant improvements to the facilities. In addition to a new roof, there have been improvements to the hallways, gyms, auditoriums, and much more.

The most notable change is in the hallways.

According to Superintendent Robert Fischer, they wanted a way to tie Twin Valley South’s history into the complex. To do so, they named the hallways after the schools which came before Twin Valley South.

To make the facility safer and easier for first responders to navigate, Twin Valley South’s hallways are now color coated and broken into zones.

“We’ve done some security things around our building. We added names to some of our hallways, trying to bring in the history of Twin Valley South,” Fischer said. “The school was made up of Lanier Township — which used to be the Lanier Tigers at one point, and it was also made up of West Alexandria — which was the West Alexandria Bulldogs.

“What we did is, in our hallways for safety precautions we’re naming our hallways after some of the history of our community,” Fischer said. “For example, our elementary will be known as the Tiger Hallways and the color scheme down there is red and white, which is the Lanier Tiger colors. Our middle school will now be known as the Bulldog Hallways, which are blue and white. That ironically worked well, because for whatever reason when they designed the school they put blue lockers down that hallway. Our high school hallways will be known as the Panther Hallways and it is the gray and the red.

“Each of the hallways will have identification throughout the hallway,” Fischer continued. “In fact, we have name plates being put up today that list each of the hallways. We are not changing the identity of the school, we will still be the Twin Valley South Panthers, but what it is doing is if for any reason we had a security breach of any kind, within each of the hallways there are specific zones being labelled.

“For example, in the elementary we’re going to have Tiger Zone One, Tiger Zone Two, and Tiger Zone Three, which represent the three different academic hallways that are listed in the buildings. Above each hallway going into it, there will be an identifier telling you what hallways it is.”

“We hope that when we have officers or first responders coming in, they are going to have a much better direction to know what way to go in,” Fischer said. “We’re also redoing our maps that are going to be identical to our zones, so visitors will also have a better idea of where to go.”

While that is a huge change to the complex, there have been many other improvements made. Fischer said the board of education and former superintendent Dr. Clint Moore initiated the changes.

“Our goal at South is to make sure the decisions that we make do not financially have a negative impact on things going on in the classroom,” he said. “We have been very fortunate since September of 2015, we have collected from generous donors over the last 18 months approximately $357,000.

“With that money we have been able to put it back into our athletic complex for our athletic needs. Back in the fall and spring of 2016, we were able to purchase new home bleachers for our football facility,” Fischer said. “We were able to purchase two new scoreboards for our high school gym. We were able to purchase a new sound system for our high school football field. We were able to do some upgrades to our high school scoreboard. Basically we replaced the scoreboard without taking out the old one. Then we replaced some of our sports history banners.”

Those improvements were done with funds raised from the previous year.

As for improvements made this year, Fischer said, “With our continued donor support, we are in the process of completely resurfacing our high school gym and elementary and middle school gym floors. We completely stripped them down and painted those gyms. We were able purchase a brand new sound system for our high school gym this year. We have four new scoreboards coming. We are replacing the one existing scoreboard that was in the elementary gym and adding a second to the other wall. We are also purchasing a baseball and softball scoreboard.”

“We have some projects that we are looking down the line, but those are our big projects this year,” he added. “The other big project is that we are replacing our baseball infield as well. Those are a lot of the big projects we did during the course of this year and are still working on.”

No dollars for any of those projects came out of the school’s general fund — the improvements were all paid for by donated funds.

As for improvements taken out of general funds, Fischer explained, “We’ve purchased new camera surveillance equipment. Our goal is to make sure the value of what we’re spending to our taxpayers. So they see what we’re spending and why we’re spending it. We’re in the process right now, going from 20 cameras to 46 cameras in our building.”

Looking to the future, Fischer said, “We’re always looking for more donated funds. I know a goal of the board of education is to have a digital marquee at some point. We want to put that out in front. Other improvements we’re looking at doing is some refurbishing of our existing weight room. Everything we do we want to impact as many of our athletes as possible.

“One other program we are looking at — we are in the process right now of working with a company called the Guaranteed Clean Energy Group (GCE),” Fischer said. “The basic premise is they will come in and analyze what your energy usage is right now. That’s anything from your lights, to your doors, to your windows, to your boiler system, to your heating and cooling systems. Everything that we have in the building is from 1995.

“The only big changes we’ve made is last year we updated our chillers and we also in January 2016 they replaced some of our old water mechanical systems. With the GCE Act we are looking at hopeful replacement of our exterior doors, our exterior windows, replacing our existing lighting with LED lighting, looking to potentially replacing our water boilers.

“The number one goal is to be fiscally responsible with tax payers’ money, while still growing academic opportunities,” Fischer said.

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Twin Valley Community Local Schools has been working hard over the last year to make significant improvements to facilities. One of those changes is to the hallways of the facility. To honor the history of Twin Valley South, the hallways have been color coated and named after the schools that came before Twin Valley South. There is a Lanier Tiger Hallway, West Alexandria Bulldog Hallway, and a Twin Valley South Panther Hallway.
http://www.registerherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2017/08/web1_1Image.jpgTwin Valley Community Local Schools has been working hard over the last year to make significant improvements to facilities. One of those changes is to the hallways of the facility. To honor the history of Twin Valley South, the hallways have been color coated and named after the schools that came before Twin Valley South. There is a Lanier Tiger Hallway, West Alexandria Bulldog Hallway, and a Twin Valley South Panther Hallway. Kelsey Kimbler | The Register-Herald

http://www.registerherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2017/08/web1_1Image-1.jpgKelsey Kimbler | The Register-Herald

http://www.registerherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2017/08/web1_1Image-2.jpgKelsey Kimbler | The Register-Herald

By Kelsey Kimbler

[email protected]

Reach Kelsey Kimbler at 937-683-4061

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