DEL NORTE— During the Del Norte Board of education meeting on Sept. 27, NV5 owner representative Todd McCowin gave an update on the progress of the new school. McCowin stated that the project was moving along nicely and that construction is ahead of schedule for the time being. He also explained that the community would see a building by the beginning of December.
“We are happy to say that we are about 65 percent finished with the footers for the auditorium and hope to have a structure in place by Dec. 1. Masons are on site and will be working on getting the brick laid and crews are working to lay trenches for underground water lines and electrical. The community should be seeing steel going up for the auditorium by the end of the week next week and a building before winter sets in,” said McCowin.
Superintendent Chris Burr spoke to the board explaining that he learned something new during the last construction meeting that took place earlier in the month. “I learned that they will not be laying down cement slabs in the site of the auditorium until the building it in place. There are slabs placed in specific areas that you can see now that help support the foundation which will bear the weight of the entire building. It can be really confusing until you go to the actual site and see for yourself,” stated Burr.
McCowin continued, explaining that the construction company FCI would be happy to do site visits for the school board at any time as long as they have notice. “We are happy to walk through the site with anyone as long as we have notice beforehand. It is so much easier to understand the process of construction if you can see it firsthand. We are moving along as quickly as we can, hoping to beat winter and have a building by the time the real cold sets in,” said McCowin.
In addition to the site visits, the public can now view the construction through a live feed from a camera that has been set up on site. “Our new campus construction site preparation has progressed to the point that some concrete footers are being poured. I’ve installed a live streaming web camera. We are working with our website host to embed live camera feed onto our website home page. Perfecting the website camera embedding is still in progress,” explained District Technology Coordinator Ken Goff.  
“I know that many of you are anxious to have live access to view our new campus construction. You can also view this web camera live directly from this link: http://live3.brownrice.com/embed/delnorte1. We will soon have time-lapsed video feed available on our web site too. Thank you all for your hard work and support of this important project. Now you can watch and enjoy the progress live as our new campus emerges,” continued Goff.
More information and updates on the new school can also be found at www.dncsd.org.