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Not much needed to prepare Meyers facility

William Ferchland

Hundreds of desks, tables and chairs fill the multipurpose room in neat rows. Some classrooms are bare while others house a graveyard of computers and other electronic equipment. The stale smell of dust hovers in the air.

Yet even though plywood-boarded windows make the closed school look like it’s bracing for Hurricane Emily, the facilities manager for Lake Tahoe Unified School District believes the school will be ready for students by the third week of August.

The school has to be ready for students this September after the district’s board of education unanimously voted Tuesday to reopen the site as the Lake Tahoe Environmental Science Magnet School.



Steve Morales, the district’s facilities manager, said a couple of days of work from a crew of 10 will get the school “ready to go” for an anticipated eight teachers and 180 students from prekindergarten to fifth grade.

Two years ago a $750,000 modernization brought in handicap-friendly restrooms, remodeled classroom wing entrances, additional electrical outlets and other amenities.



The year before, the Meyers school was retrofitted with external steel beams to guard against heavy snowloads and earthquakes.

But there is work to be done. Since Meyers was basically used as a storage closet when it and Al Tahoe Elementary closed because of budget cuts for the 2004-05 school year, there is plenty of material to move around. One of the three classroom wings will remain a storage space.

Wireless computer capabilities need to be reinstated and window coverings added. But officials agree work will be easier than when the school closed.

And there’s enthusiasm, said Daryl Quant, whose wife, Beth, was the first teacher to apply for the magnet school. The enthusiasm was evident in the teachers’ lounge with two words written in red pen on an easel.

“Welcome back!!” it read.

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