Construction manager Kris Roberts said Monday that work on the middle school should be finished in November, as long as the project progresses as she anticipates.

The new school, for students in fifth-grade through eighth-grade, is under construction on the district’s 80-acre site near Pleasant and Washington.

“We are doing really well,” Roberts told Tonganoxie school board members Monday. “The middle school’s roof will be done by the end of the month. We should be able to turn the heating and air conditioning on at the end of April or the beginning of May.”

Meanwhile, at the high school, now that basketball season has ended, the gym will be the focus of work.

“We’re actually going to be moving into the existing gym this week,” Roberts said. “We’ll be taking the hardwood floor out toward the end of the week and the weekend.”

Work at the gym will include replacing and enlarging the basketball court, which currently is 2 1/2 feet shy of being regulation length. When finished, Roberts said, the court will be 84 feet long.

And, the addition to the north side of the gym will allow for more upper-level seating.

The gym would be tied up in construction for the rest of the school year, Roberts said, noting the high school’s outdoor graduation is usually held in the gym if it rains.

Roberts added, “We’re really hoping it doesn’t rain at graduation, because if it does we’re all going to get wet.”

Graduation is set for 7 p.m. May 13 at Beatty Field.

At the end of the school year, construction will begin in the existing auditorium to convert it into a lecture hall.

The new auditorium and the band room, under construction on the west side of the existing high school, won’t be finished until December, Roberts said.

That means, she added, that during the fall semester, the high school won’t have an auditorium.

Work to renovate several areas in the existing junior high will be done during the summer, Roberts said.

Elementary school principal Jerry Daskoski presented three calendars to the board for approval. One calendar shows the 2006-2007 school year time schedule that assumes the middle school construction will be completed in November. Two alternate calendars offer slightly different schedules that could be used if the construction timetable changes.

The six board members, with Dr. Richard Dean absent, voted unanimously to approve the main calendar, and the contingency calendars. Daskoski noted that only the main calendar would be published.

“But these will be there already approved, should they need to be used,” Daskoski said.