NORWICH – Construction crews are on site once more in the Norwich City School District, as work begins on the roughly $3 million follow up to the district’s last major building project.

“The really big push officially started yesterday,” Superintendent Gerard O’Sullivan reported on Tuesday, the day after crews, construction trailers and dumpsters arrived on site. Some work, however, was already underway even before students finished the school year. According to the administrator, some contractors began working second shift several weeks ago in preparation for the work, which is slated for completion before students return in September.

“We’ve got a very busy two months (ahead of us),” O’Sullivan said.

According to the administrator, the supplemental project was given the green light by the district’s board of education in January of 2009. The intention is to fund the small-scale capital project with the surplus remaining from the $35.3 million improvement project completed last year.

The scope of the secondary project encompasses work at all four of the district’s school buildings. New windows will be installed at Stanford Gibson Elementary School, as well as at Perry Browne Intermediate School. Entry doors at the intermediate school will also be replaced, but perhaps the most visible transformation will to the school’s tennis courts.

“They are going to be changed over to Pickle-ball courts,” explained O’Sullivan. Courts to accommodate the game – which is played with wooden paddles and combines elements of tennis, ping-pong and badminton – will take up roughly half of the space currently occupied by the tennis courts. The remaining space will be converted to parking.

“Nothing is being done in the new part of the Middle School,” the superintendent said, referring to the wing added in the last project. The only exception will be to the school’s main office, where space currently shared by a school counselor and school psychologist will be split to create an office for Interim Assistant Principal Kistin Giglio. Giglio was appointed to the interim position on June 16 and will replace the building’s current assistant principal, Patricia Giltner, following her planned retirement in September. Giltner’s office, located in another part of the school, will be repurposed.