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With less than two months before students head back to school, Collier County school officials are making sure the district facilities are in tip-top shape for their arrival.

Lexey Swall/Staff

George Abounader spackles the ceiling in the hallway of what will be the new gymnasium at Marco Island Charter Middle School which will is scheduled to open for the next school year.

The district isn’t just replacing roofs and painting classrooms, some projects involve building a school from the ground up.

Work on Marco Island’s newest middle school is expected to be complete when students head back to school August 20, said Alvah Hardy, director of facilities management for the school district.

“We will be open when school starts,” Hardy said last week.

Marco Island Charter Middle School received its temporary certificate of occupancy for the academic building earlier this month, said George Abounader.

“There still remains some items on the ‘punch out list’ that need to be satisfactorily completed before the building is fully operable, but the major portion of construction for the first building is complete,” Abounader said in an e-mail last week. “During the remainder of the summer, we will be setting up the various rooms so that by August 13, when the teachers return, the building will be fully functional.”

While the academic building is nearly complete, Abounader said he expects to get a temporary certificate of occupancy for the second building by early July. The second building will act as a related arts facility, housing the gymnasium and music rooms. Abounader said the only major work left on the related arts building is laying the gym floor.

“The floor will be a multipurpose, synthetic one (that) needs to be constructed in layers under precise conditions,” he said. “I don’t anticipate the floor being completed until the end of July.”

Hardy said it needs to be completed by the first day of school, since the portables that once housed the temporary campus have already been removed.

“Failing to complete the project in time is not an option,” Abounader said. “All of the work must be completed by the opening (day) of school because with the absence of all of our previous portable classrooms, there is no other place to house the students.”

While the district is working to complete the middle school, Hardy said no work is being done on the Tommie Barfield Elementary campus.

The same can not be said for Lely High School, though. As soon as students were dismissed from school, the district began replacing the school’s aging air conditioning system and roof, Hardy said. The air conditioner was several years old, and was past the point of repairing. The roof was also long overdue for replacement, he added.

“Something like a roof is pretty evident when it needs replaced,” said Hardy. “Maintenance usually sees an increased amount of work orders.”

Once the major repairs were fixed, Hardy said staff members began repainting the interior of the school. Painting could not begin until all of the school’s students and employees had left for the summer, he said.