Schools continue to improve facilities with bond work

ST. CLAIR SHORES — Over the course of the school year, St. Clair Shores school districts have been busy improving facilities and building new ones to welcome in students. 

District officials said projects are planned to continue improving facilities to create a safe and welcoming environment for students to learn and thrive. 

 

South Lake Schools
At South Lake, work at Elmwood Elementary and Avalon Elementary is finishing up.

Superintendent Ted VonHiltmayer said the work was focused on the inside of the buildings this time. 

“Right now, we’re substantially complete with all of that work in both of those buildings,” VonHiltmayer said. “And we’re just going through punch list items at this point and just finalizing those things.” 

The schools have new ventilator units, boilers, updated LED lighting, new ceiling grids and tiles, new flooring and more. Boilers and other things were reaching the end of their working life and needed to be replaced. 

Avalon also received new furniture for both students and teachers. 

“We plan on replacing furniture for Elmwood this coming summer,” VonHiltmayer said. 

VonHiltmayer said the students and teachers love the new furniture. He continued, saying they wanted to create new flexible spaces for the classes. 

“The furniture accommodates that very well,” VonHiltmayer said. 

Student desks can be moved to form different shapes for the best learning experience. Most of the teacher furniture is now on wheels so they can get around their classroom the best they can. 

Some teachers and classes had to be moved at the beginning of the school year due to ongoing construction.

Scheduled future work includes the parking lots at the athletic complex and the high school, and similar maintenance work at more buildings. 

These projects are from a bond passed in August 2023 worth around $49 million. 

 

Lake Shore Public Schools
Construction continues at the building connected to Rodgers Elementary School in the Lake Shore Public Schools district. 

The building is split into three areas: a community center, an early childhood center and the elementary school. The elementary school is completed and functional while construction is ongoing at the early childhood center and community center. The construction is part of a previous bond project worth around $67 million for all the work in the district. 

The community center will include a rock-climbing wall, places for batting cages, workout equipment and more. 

“Our goal and our plan is not only for this to be available to the community, but obviously for our kids to access and use this space,” Superintendent Joseph DiPonio said. 

DiPonio said the district’s business and administration offices will also be at this building. 

“When people are in the same space it maximizes communication,” DiPonio said later in the interview. “It also allows, from a cost savings perspective, to really kind of close down Born Center right now, which is an aging, old elementary that we operate a couple programs out of.” 

A multipurpose room is also at the center, with athletic and academic banquets, school board meetings and more being planned for that location. 

A room dedicated to security with a video surveillance board is located at the building. It shows all the schools in the district as well as parking lots and other things at all times. 

The early childhood center is decorated with bright colors emulating a nature theme. The goal, DiPonio said, is to limit technology as much as they can in the center for the youngest learners. 

All three areas are spread apart enough to not disturb each other. DiPonio said the elementary students had good reviews of their new space. They plan to have the whole entire building done by early spring. 

The last things planned for the rest of the bond include infrastructure work, a renovation at Violet Elementary School, a new baseball stadium on Masonic Boulevard, a new softball stadium, redoing the turf at the existing football field and a new 1/8-mile track behind Kennedy Middle School. 

“I don’t anticipate any other major projects with this bond, but we’ve already gotten so much more done than we could have ever dreamed of,” DiPonio said. 

 

Lakeview Public Schools
Since the summer, construction has started on the Wheat Early Childhood Center with the intention to dedicate the entire building to the littlest learners. 

For now, the district’s administration including the superintendent, human resources, technical department and others have been leasing what used to be the St. Germaine Catholic School from the Archdiocese of Detroit. 

The school attached to the Our Lady of Hope Parish permanently closed in 2024.

Superintendent Karl Paulson said the school district cannot use certain areas attached to the school including the gym or the social hall due to ongoing services and functions at Our Lady of Hope. The area they’re leasing comes up to 22,000 square feet of space. 

School board meetings are not held at the school building. The first meeting after the move will be held at the Jefferson Middle School cafeteria at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 17, located at 27900 Rockwood Street.

Paulson said the plans are to add more preschool classrooms in the Wheat building and perhaps a newborn-to-3-year-old childcare operation. 

“We think we’re going to add all those services once that building is complete this summer,” Paulson said. “So a very fast turnaround on the project so that we have more classrooms available for preschool in August 2026.” 

The Wheat building renovations were made possible by the most recent bond vote in November 2025, and it is the first project of the new bond.

The previous bond included the Lakeview High School pool and auditorium renovations. The district added new sound, lighting, curtains and more to the auditorium and they added new heating and cooling, bleachers, a filtering system and much more at the pool. Both have been completed. 

Due to post COVID-19 pandemic increases, the bond funds ran out, and the district had to supplement the costs with its general fund balance. 

“Savings that we have kind of accumulated over a decade helped us cover the difference and those are projects that needed to happen,” Paulson said. “These are things that you have to do if you’re going to have an operational pool or an operational auditorium.”

Paulson said pool renovations took a bit longer than anticipated, displacing the girls swim team to other schools for practices and home meets temporarily. The thing that held up renovations in the pool area was a huge, solid concrete slab in the mechanical room workers had to chip away at and drag up the stairs. This was completed over the course of two weeks. Paulson said it was made to cover up something in the past, but what its purpose was is unclear. 

The school district has a complete schedule for the bond work up until 2030. Paulson said these items are not visible to the public. Some of these things include updates to the heating and cooling in the classrooms throughout the district and roofing. 

“That’s millions of dollars of this next bond, but you have to do it,” Paulson said. “You need heating and cooling in the classrooms, right, that’s not a choice.”

They also intend to fix the 20-year-old tennis courts at Jefferson Middle School in the new bond. The new bond is divided into three pieces adding up to $44.1 million. 

For more school information go to the South Lake website at solake.org, the Lake Shore website at lakeshoreschools.org and the Lakeview website at lakeviewpublicschools.org.