Central Office staff members moved to the new location this spring.
By Donna M. Perry
Staff Writer

LIVERMORE FALLS – Renovations are shaping up the Cedar Street Complex, a former grammar school, that now houses Head Start and SAD 36 Central Office.

Soon sixth-graders will call the building home as they spend a year there to transition from the fifth grade at the Livermore Elementary School to the seventh grade at the Middle School.

The Central Office, which serves as Superintendent Terry Despres’ base, is at the end of the complex. What once was an all-purpose room for third- through fifth-graders is now a suite of offices, a break room and a board room.

Despres sat at a desk kitty-cornered in a room that was heating up early Wednesday. The place is lit with sunshine but it also absorbs the heat. Despres said once the new windows and three portable air conditioners are installed, it should be a lot cooler.

Sixty-eight new thermal-paned windows are expected to arrive for installation this week.

“This was a big project but the right thing to do,” Despres said. “When we get it done, it will be an impressive building.”

The building sat vacant for a few years, with only bathroom facilities used by alternative education students who were housed in a portable classroom outside the school.

So far, the project has cost $220,000. Of that, $130,000 was contributed by the Head Start program and the remainder came from state re-allocations.

Central Office staff members, including Despres, moved from an office on the second floor of the bank building on Main Street to the new location this spring.

A door in the office leads to the SAD 36 Board of Directors’ meeting room, which in the future will double as a sixth-grade computer laboratory.

Step through another doorway in the room into the hallway and white walls and shades of blue trim and flooring make for a bright and spacious walkway to what used to be wall to wall classrooms. Now a former classroom has been converted into three offices and storage space for directors of transportation, custodial and technology services.

Walking down the hall, on the left are four classrooms for sixth-graders and an additional room for special education services. On the right are rooms for the Livermore Falls Head Start programs that include a full-size kitchen, classroom, multipurpose room and a home-based room.

A doublewide trailer, once used as a portable classroom is expected to move off the property next week. The district has sold its three portable units, the other two at the middle school, to schools in Carmel and Jefferson.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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