I have been working on the new Media Center Projects throughout GTPS for the past few months. The concept, planning, selling parts were easy enough. The additions to the Media Centers are a project whose time has come and was probably two or three years late in fact. We had talked many times about putting together these rooms and it had almost happened once before during my tenure at GTPS. In short, they are comming. A couple of problems, I have a furniture budget of about $10,000 I am not sure the last time I had priced out computer or lab furniture and I am not sure what I was thinking when I set that number but I do know that I am up to figures at about $14,500 or so. I mentioned in the last post that I was optimistic about the possibility of getting down to my original number for the furniture portion but after today I may be stumped with the total comming in at about $12,000 or so. I realize that it is my own fault for shooting so low but the numbers crunch is comming from the chairs. I am not sure if I thought that I could get the chairs at $20 a piece or what but I must have been either very tired on just not paying attention when I put together the estimate. The best I have come up with so far is about $36 per chair. Not bad but when you need a hundred or so chairs the difference means about a little over a thousand dollars. Another item I have been wavering on has been whether or not I can reuse some of the library furniture at both Roland and Smithville. To their credit, the Media Center personnel have kept this stuff in very good shape. I had our resident carpenter Steve Wilkens from the Maintenance Department look at the custom casework that currently serving as the computer center in both locations. I want to take them apart, remove the center backdrops and then re-assemble them for use as the center island of my design in both of those locations. His first thoughts were that it could be done but since I have them working on a number of projects that have to be completed soon the question is when? August is shaping up to be a real tough month. I really only have three weeks to pump a couple of months work into the finishing of each of the tech projects that are in progress. Fred has most of the machines built and we have about 10 or so left to do but they have not arrived at the tech center as yet and I am sure that he will knock them out as quickly as he did the first 75 units.
The real reason for this story is table height and the determination of the proper table height for the lab and media center tables. I have been measuring around the district and have come up with multiple locations with counter heights from 24 inches to 32 inches. I have looked at over fifty catalogs that have either fixed height tables or adjustable height tables. The fixed height tables are the ones that are in our price range and I have come across sets that have 30 inches of desktop space as well as are 28.5 inches in height. I am going to review the selections Friday and make my choices on Monday morning. Once the tables are ordered and the carpet put in in the Rann and Reeds I can begin to build the centers. I am hoping that I can put it into high gear in August and I can get the areas ready for the beginning of school. We will have to assemble the furniture but that is what we have done in the past so I am sure that we can get that done. We have to paint in one room and Butch has gotten the lights done in Room 49 at Reeds Rd. and they look great. Taking down the lights from the exterior of the grid has really opened up the room and should give us quite a bit more light that was in the room before. In any event I hope my selection of the tables is good for everyone concerned. I have adults and students to provide for so the task is not simple and I would imagine that I won't make everyone happy with my selections but its the best I could find.
7:53:06 PM 
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