Removing 6,000 pounds of unusable school materials from CMR’s basement was one of several renovations accomplished during the summer.
“It was a dirty job and a ton of labor was involved,”  CMR custodian John Hoenjet said. Yet the job only took three weeks to complete, and though the majority of the items that were stored were old desks and miscellaneous furniture from the 1960’s and beyond, there were a few rarities.
“We found a lot of old pop cans with the original pull tabs along with old pictures and broken trophies from ’65 to ’73,” CMR custodian Bernard Tesch said.
The removal of the three tons of “junk” as Tesch describes it was not the only stride to improve the school made by the custodial and engineering staffs. Among these was the installment of 16 new security cameras. New asphalt and concrete was laid in both the staff parking lot as well as around the walkway on the east side (or the docking area) surrounding the outside of the school known as the “apron.” Associate Principal Kerry Parsons said the apron was settling and needed to be reconstructed. A new trash compactor is also being placed at the docking area that Parsons assures will be more environmentally efficient.
There are also several ongoing projects that are aimed at making CMR’s resources more productive, including the completion of mounting the LCD projectors to the ceilings of some rooms. Parsons said that the projectors were purchased a while ago.Another ongoing project is the grass field behind the main student lot, which is being converted into a work field for sports practicing and the P.E. classes.
Although there has been quite a bit of time and effort put into making such renovations some could not come about due to ongoing acts of vandalism.
The water fountains are one area repeatedly vandilized. Parsons said that students have been removing the front plates and turning the spouts and in turn breaking them. The company that currently produces the water fountains has no way of replacing the items that have been defaced or broken therefore rendering a substantial number of the water fountains at CMR useless.
“It’s a shame because the students are doing the damage and then their parents are the taxpayers that have to pay for those damages,” Parsons said.