MONTOURSVILLE -- Students in the Montoursville Area School District who may have expected to come back to a new school this year are taking classes just feet from a construction site.
Susan Earl isn't used to teaching in her current classroom at Montoursville Area High School. She was moved to a renovated part of the building.
"I don't have ceiling tiles per se, but I do have a ceiling. they are in the process of working on the floors," said Earl.
Hallways and classrooms are under renovation in one part of the building. There's an addition under construction outside.
Students and faculty have to park out in front of the school this year to make room for construction project out back.
"It's really pretty exciting," Earl added. "You get to see what's going on and you can hear some of the noise but it's not a disruption."
The $36 million renovation and construction project has faced criticism from a group of taxpayers in Montoursville.
The school hoped to have students in a portion of the new school by the start of this school year but they're not.
Less than a week after kids returned to class, Montoursville's Principal Dan Taormina showed us around the new building.
"By opening up parts of this building through the renovation they were able to repair some of the things that we felt needed to be done, so, yeah, we are safer today than we were in June," Taormina said.
A portion of the construction project is already finished. By the end of the last school year, kids were already in the new Tech Ed building. This year they will have new equipment to use.
"I was excited because we have four new Powermatic wood lathes," said wood shop teacher Tyler Woolever.
New and better equipment makes Woolever's job easier.
"It's been very easy to motivate them. They want to go to work."
Work on the new building will continue. The school plans to have students in by the end of the year.
