As everyone knows, Littlestown High School is undergoing some large-scale renovations. With this comes a plethora of questions that not every staff member can answer. In order to clear the air and get answers for the student body and staff alike, I sat down with Dr. Nathan Becker and asked what everyone has been wondering.

Q: When is construction expected to be fully completed?

A: “So, obviously things could slide and change a little bit, based on just the weather and things that alter what’s happening. But right now it would be mid to late December would be the completion date of this year. And then there is, scheduled through January, more work because what happens at the end of construction is they do what’s called a punch list. It’s basically … walking through and checking all the items that need to be adjusted or things that are a little off. You might have seen little pieces of blue tape everywhere, maybe in some of [the] classrooms, that’s what those were. So all through January, we’re working on completing the punch list to get everything in its best place.”

Q: Are we on track for this to happen?

A: “Yep, right now, I would say yes, based on the conversations and what happens in the construction meetings, yes. There’s nowhere that it’s behind that they can’t make that up.”

Q: What are some of the new features in the classrooms? Which are you most excited to see in use?

A: “I don’t know [if] it’s specific to the classrooms themselves as much as I think what I’d be interested to see is what we’re going to be able to do with the new learning commons area more than the specific classrooms. 

The general classrooms are still classrooms. So it’s a lot of the same technology that was in them before. They look nicer and they’re cleaned up, of course. 

But I mean, in my opinion, it’s a nicer culinary room. I think the labs for the science rooms are a little bit nicer for them to utilize. It’s exceptional compared to [the middle school] building. I think probably the thing is the downstairs portion of our learning commons, which is part of the last, or the third phase. We will need to see what we can do with that, because there are some other ideas coming that I won’t get into right now. There’ll be specific places in the library that we can make a free movement space at times, but if a teacher wants to mark out, like the maker space or like the learning stairs or something that there might be at a time where they have to do just that, like mark it so that everybody doesn’t show up at the same time. It’s interesting that it feels like some of the movement gives it more of a collegiate feel. 

So, like, you’ll see when you go to college, just the feel of what the space is furnished like and how it looks, it’s starting to go more in that direction in some of these spaces, which is nice.”

Q: What is the plan to separate middle school and high school students?

A: “I think primarily the middle school students will be in the ’60s wing- the sixth grade is entirely in that ’60s wing. So they’ll be able to just utilize that one restroom and through Securly with the pass system, we can make sure that they’re only using those. 

I think one of the things we’ve talked about possibly is with scheduling, is, if we are on a working bell schedule that moves together early on, we might adjust the bell schedule just a hair so that the transition time is different. I think at the end of the day, we’d like to get everybody just moving in a shared schedule, but we might just alter it a hair so that we get the middle schoolers moving where they need to, then literally just a minute later get the high schoolers moving, so not everybody’s transitioning at the same time. 

So that’s a possibility early on for that reality. There’s crossing of paths that has to occur. I mean, we’re going to a cafeteria, we’re going to art rooms, we’re going to gym, you know, there’s places where it’s going to happen, but that happens now if you’re on a bus. 

So they’ll just line up here at the end of the day, beginning of the day, they’ll just be able to have this because then we can move the car drop off to the end on the backside: at the end of the old ’60s wing, there’s gonna be a loop that the cars can drive.

Q: When are the middle school students expected to be moved in?

A: “I see it most likely that it would be at the start of the 2026-27 [school year]. That would be most likely. I don’t think there’s any solidified statement that that’s the case at this point, so I’m not saying that’s how it happens.”

Q: Have there been any setbacks or issues that have changed the original plan?

A: “They have, if you pay any attention to board meetings and the things that happen, we sometimes hear the term change orders. So they’ll get into the construction end, especially since it’s an old building. [The original wing] was built in 1962. So when they pulled off the lockers, they found, for example, that it wasn’t studded up the whole way. 

So there’s things that you’re not aware of because you can’t see behind the walls until you tear them down. So then there’s change orders that you have, we have to finish and continue in order to frame it up properly. The other thing that happens at schools that you don’t realize, of course this was planned about three years ago, and what they determined were the different things that they were using. For example, one of the tiles that’s going to be placed on that little cafe out front is discontinued now. So when they put it together, it was no longer an option. So then you have to take a little time for them to now find something that’s similar, change that out, get a new time, it’s things like that. 

So luckily there’s, to my knowledge, not been major major issues that slowed it because we are still on track. But there’s always things like that that are just continuously happening that behind the scenes, people have to find new ways to fix it or get new materials.”

Q: How do you think the combined school will benefit the students and staff?

A: “I do think we can offer more. There is potential for growth as far as utilizing a combined staff, so this isn’t completed yet, but for example, we could give opportunities for an eighth grade student to take a level one language class. What we could look at for a world language example is taking that level one and eighth grade, which now opens an opportunity for an AP or college type course in world language. So the ability to offer more does open up as a result of that combination and makes it a little bit easier for us to do things like that. 

So that’s just one small example, but the ways that we could take advantage of the combined staff and possibly even open up some other offerings [is] something I think we’ll take advantage of once we get settled.”