Join Vanessa Brinkman as Principal Dianne Huslin takes you on a tour of all the exciting new renovations at Eastlake High School, along with a sneak peek at all that’s to come! From the theater to the library to the classrooms, these changes are creating an even better learning environment for all students, so tune in to find out what exactly has been going on!
Transcript:
Mrs. Brinkman
Hey, Eastlake community! My name is Mrs. Brinkman, and I am here with Ms. Huslin today, and she’s going to be taking us through all the updates on the renovation. I know you’ve seen it driving past Eastlake Parkway and you see fencing, and you know some construction stuff going on. She today is going to give us all the updates to highlight all the great work that you’ve been overseeing here on campus. So, how’re you doing Ms. Huslin?
Ms. Huslin
I’m doing great, thank you!
Mrs. Brinkman
Thank you so much for doing this for us today. We really appreciate it, and I’m sure the community is super excited to finally hear about all of the changes that have been a long time coming.
Ms. Huslin
Right, so as you’re aware, our school opened in 1992 and it’s been left relatively untouched since then. So beginning in the fall of ’23 the district started a year long painting and flooring renovation. And so they went through building by building renewing all the carpeting, the vinyl, the painting, both inside and out. So it was much overdue, and I think the results are fantastic.
Mrs. Brinkman
So we’re gonna take you on a little tour today just to show all the upgrades. So let’s start here with our main office, so can you tell us what happened? What are some of the big changes in here?
Ms. Huslin
So really they left the structure alone, and they took out the flooring that was peeling up, and they replaced it with our lovely wood grain vinyl that I think makes the office look professional and updated. They also repainted everything. We didn’t actually have to change much of the furniture or anything because with the pop of color, with the fresh paint, everything looks new. One of the things that we had to do was a little bit structural outside with the fencing. When they fenced the school back in the early 90s, they actually fenced in the attendance windows, which really didn’t make any sense, because 90% of our foot traffic in the office are parents that are here to pick up their students for a variety of appointments. So about a year ago, we redid that fence so that now the attendance windows sit outside of the fence, and so they go to the attendance windows, and then everything is taken care of there, and if they do have to enter campus, that’s where they enter campus through that one door.
Mrs. Brinkman
Oh, that’s so much more accessible.
Ms. Huslin
Yes.
Mrs. Brinkman
Little bit easier to manage.
Ms. Huslin
And most importantly, safer.
Mrs. Brinkman
Absolutely, absolutely. So now that we’re done in the main office, you want to take us around a tour of the rest of campus?
Ms. Huslin
Absolutely, let’s go!
Mrs. Brinkman
I feel like this is probably the most awe worthy moment in here. Take us through the theater. What happened? What’d you do?
Ms. Huslin
Well, first and foremost, what they did is they painted the theater more like a traditional theater, with the dark walls. They redid the flooring, and they took out the chairs that were bolted into the concrete and replaced them with chairs. As you see, we’re in the process of putting new curtains in.
Mrs. Brinkman
They’re beautiful, everything’s so clean and so pretty!
Ms. Huslin
Right, and so we now have, like, a proper theater. In addition, there’s still some work that’s going to happen in the near future. First of all, they’re going to re sand and resurface the stage floor, which, again, being over 30 years old, was a little bit in rough shape. And so we have not only just some aesthetic things going on, but also some real practical things going on in the theater.
Mrs. Brinkman
But what’s really, really nice about that is that you’re still taking a moment and honoring our greats that were here before: we have our Keith Davis stage. I’m just so excited that you’re able to refinish that, and that’s gonna be a nice moment for the alumni on campus.
Ms. Huslin
Right, right.
Mrs. Brinkman
Well, anything else that we need to look forward to? Any sound systems or anything updating?
Ms. Huslin
Those are in the works. We also have some money coming down from the state that will help us to refurbish everything in the theater, not just the surfaces.
Mrs. Brinkman
Alright, Ms. Huslin, you ready to continue on our tour?
Ms. Huslin
Yes, let’s head over to the classrooms!
Mrs. Brinkman
Alright, sounds good, let’s go!
So here we are, we’re in one of our famous classrooms, IT-5 home of the amazing Mr. Garcia, and here we want to showcase what’s been happening inside the classroom.
Ms. Huslin
Right, so in this particular space, we did the flooring and the painting, but in addition to that, they used to have seats that were bolted to the ground, so those were removed, and we were able to get all new furniture for IT-5. In addition, all the science classrooms were able to get new furniture because of the flooring requirements, the old furniture would have scuffed up the new floors. So…
Mrs. Brinkman
There you go!
Ms. Huslin
So that’s how that was worked in.
Mrs. Brinkman
Well, and the big thing too is that a lot of these renovations have been done extending the life. So when you want to protect your floors, the first thing you gotta do is get new furniture.
Ms. Huslin
Right, right.
Mrs. Brinkman
And then not to mention in IT-5 they redid the cushions in the back.
Ms. Huslin
They were able to reupholster them and make them again, a nice blue for Eastlake.
Mrs. Brinkman
I know I’ve heard nothing but positive things about being inside the classroom, from students saying, like, “wow this is so nice,” and I’m like, yeah, don’t mess it up! We don’t want to wait another 30 years!
Ms. Huslin
Right, right.
Mrs. Brinkman
Alright, Ms. Huslin, so here we are in front of Phase Two, because we were talking about Phase One being primarily exterior paint, interior paint, flooring, which is super exciting! But, I think this might be probably more exciting than that.
Ms. Huslin
This is probably the greatest transformation that’s going to happen here on campus. Behind those blue construction fences is our library, and if you’ve been in the library before, again, it’s being over 30 years old, it was very much a series of unusable spaces, a lot of storage, but really not spaces that were accessible to our students. And so it was a complete gut job inside, and they’re taking those unusable spaces and actually turning it into a space that’s made for efficiency and the most usability.
Mrs. Brinkman
So what other kind of spaces are you adding, in addition to a library, what else are we going to look forward to?
Ms. Huslin
So there’s going to be a presentation room for students with state of the art technology. There’s also going to be three amazing classroom spaces. One is going to be the Sports Med classroom. As you might know, we have an incredible sports medicine program here on campus. So in addition to having the classroom space, we’re actually going to have an after hours treatment room for our athletes that’s accessible from the stadium.
Mrs. Brinkman
Great, so thinking late night football game on a Friday, they can go seek treatment on campus?
Ms. Huslin
Right!
Mrs. Brinkman
Great!
Ms. Huslin
And then, in addition to that, we’re going to have two adequate and state of the art special education rooms meant for our mod to severe students. It’s going to have two classroom spaces, along with a proper hygiene facility and a life skills area where students can learn how to cook and do different things for themselves to make them more self sufficient.
Mrs. Brinkman
That’s amazing! And, I’m sure something that our community is very, very excited about…
Ms. Huslin
Right, so we’re actually going to have a new bank of restrooms for our boys and girls that’s accessible from the outside.
Mrs. Brinkman
About how many stalls are we looking at?
Ms. Huslin
I think there are about 10 each, each bathroom.
Mrs. Brinkman
Wow, that’s great!
Ms. Huslin
Yes, and in order to make the most of the usable space inside the library, I know that some people are asking about the fireplace…
Mrs. Brinkman
Yes!
Ms. Huslin
And that fireplace is no longer. Instead, that room has been converted into some high density book storage space. So again, this is the state of the art, where you have movable bookshelves that will house our 50 to 60,000 textbooks that we have on campus. And so again, making the best use of the space so that it’s more accessible for our students.
Mrs. Brinkman
And what’s really exciting is that this is Phase Two, so what can we look forward to after the library renovations are done, what are we looking forward to with Phase Three?
Ms. Huslin
And so again, if you’re at all familiar with Eastlake, you know that we have a lot of sports and a lot of events, and we also have an amazing band, and they all need practice spaces. So right now the practice space is very, very tight. And so what the district is looking at is actually converting some old basketball courts into another turf field that has the markings so that any of the sports teams that would normally want to practice out in the stadium can also use that space for practice, and that frees up more of the real estate for our teams.
Mrs. Brinkman
Oh, that’s amazing, and I’m sure all of our athletes are very much looking forward to that. Now, when can we expect when will library be done, when can we expect Phase Three to even start?
Ms. Huslin
So the library is scheduled to be done in the spring of 2025, so soon.
Mrs. Brinkman
Okay.
Ms. Huslin
And so they’re wrapping that up and of course, we’ll be able to move in for sure for the next school year. The upper field remodel is still in the planning stages, so I don’t have a definite date for that yet.
Mrs. Brinkman
But that’s looking to the future?
Ms. Huslin
Yes!
Mrs. Brinkman
So I’m very excited. Alright, I think it’s time to get to the front of the school.
Ms. Huslin
Alright, let’s go!
Mrs. Brinkman
So we’re concluding our tour of the renovations, and what a great place for us to end, which is out on 1120 Eastlake Parkway. So if we haven’t driven by in a long time, what would be some of the big changes that are visible from the street?
Ms. Huslin
Well, some of it’s visible only at night. We have all of our lighting fixed, including the solar panel lot and all the exterior lighting. We have all new landscape and irrigation out here, and of course we have our fantastic new marquee, that’s the digital state of the art marquee for all of our messaging that we have for the community. In addition to that, we were able to expand the parking lot to make better use of the space, and again, add more parking spots.
Mrs. Brinkman
We always know parking’s at a premium. And another thing that’s been updated is our sign, what else can you tell us about that?
Ms. Huslin
So that was a complete redo, again, to make it modern and beautiful, and also we added lights so that the sign is illuminated at night and people are able to see it.
Mrs. Brinkman
That’s so great! Anything else? I know we chatted about Phase One, Phase Two, Phase Three. Any other updates that are coming our way?
Ms. Huslin
So we are working on getting new bleachers installed in the gymnasium! If you’ve been in there, you know even though they’re beautiful and they’re wooden, but they’re not functioning quite where we want them to be, so they’ve reached the end of their lifespan, and now we’re going to look into installing some new bleachers.
Mrs. Brinkman
Wow! Ms. Huslin, thank you so much for taking us on this tour of the renovations. I know this is your second year here, but you have been amazing in managing all of the renovations, so on behalf of alumni, faculty, everyone in the community, thank you so much for managing this project, because the school looks beautiful!
Ms. Huslin
It’s been my pleasure!
Mrs. Brinkman
Alright, well, till I see you again, thank you!
Ms. Huslin
Thank you!