RB will be closed to the general public at noon on Friday except for graduation activities. Teachers and students will be allowed to be in the building until 5 p.m.

Graduation on Friday evening is scheduled to take place in the football stadium, but will be moved to the gym in case of inclement weather.

But after graduation only construction workers will be allowed on campus, and to give the workers a few more weeks of access, students will have a slightly extended summer vacation this year.

Instead of starting school in August as they have in recent years, students will not return to school until Sept. 8. This means that the first semester exams will take place after Christmas vacation, and graduation in 2010 will be a week later.

For the summer, RB's administrative staff will move to four 60-foot long trailers located in the Rockefeller Avenue parking area.

A scaled-down summer school will be held at Hollywood School in Brookfield, just a block from RB.

When students return in September they will see a brand-new main entrance at the northwest corner of the school that will feature a curved walkway, a soaring ceiling skylight, a student commons area, and a small gallery for student art work.

"This will be a grand space for kids," said Tim Scanlon, RB's assistant principal for curriculum and instruction, last week as he helped lead a press tour of the construction site. Scanlon has worked many hours as the main staff liaison on the construction project.

Work on the new area is almost complete. All administrative offices will be relocated to the new addition. RB is also adding a new field house on the northeast part of the campus along First Avenue.

The school needs to be essentially shut down this summer because of the extensive and widespread demolition and construction work that will be taking place, said Andy Totten, the project manager for McHugh.

"The real focus is going to be on the north side of the building," Totten said.

But extensive renovation work will also be done on the cafeteria, kitchen and library. Meanwhile the south side of the building will be transformed.

The special education department will be moved to the southeast corner of the building.

"That area is being gutted and renovated," Totten said.

The current wing of administrative offices will be turned into classrooms.

On the north side of RB there will be 12 state-of-the-art science classrooms. They feature a white board above every lab table which will allow for differentiated instruction within a class, and one lab table in every classroom will be handicapped-accessible. The chemistry classroom/labs even have a small shower in case of emergencies.

Some of these new classrooms/labs have already been completed and have been in use since May 15.

Totten said there should be a net gain of 14 classrooms at RB when the project is completed.

According to Totten, the weak economy has resulted in aggressive bidding from subcontractors hungry for work. This has allowed Totten to add some extra touches that weren't in the initial budget.

All existing lockers will be replaced with new lockers, and all single-pane windows will be replaced by double-pane windows. All existing double-pane windows will be refurbished.

The original plans called for the shells of eight new classrooms to be built, but anticipated finishing the classrooms at some unspecified time in the future. However, Totten said, because the project was coming in under budget, there is money available to completely finish the classrooms now.

The work at RB should be almost complete by the start of the new school year. In the fall the only major work remaining should be a renovation of the auditorium and work on some vocational education areas.

Totten said that work at RB should completely finished by the project by the end of the fall semester.