BELLE — Summer break has been anything but quiet for the Maries County R-2 School District’s maintenance and custodial departments.

Reports presented to the Maries County R-2 Board of Education during its June 30 meeting detailed dozens of projects completed throughout the district as staff prepared buildings for the upcoming school year. The work ranged from classroom renovations and equipment moves to painting, flooring projects, playground improvements and deep cleaning.

Maintenance staff focused much of their efforts on reconfiguring classrooms to accommodate staffing and grade-level changes. Concrete walls were painted in several middle school classrooms, while Title I materials, counseling offices and the school resource officer’s workspace were relocated to new rooms.

Several classrooms received upgrades, including new whiteboards, corkboards, lockers, blinds and replacement ceiling tiles. Maintenance crews also assembled new student lockers for a fifth-grade classroom and installed additional locker storage in both the boys and girls locker rooms.

Routine maintenance included changing furnace filters throughout both the upper and lower elementary buildings, replacing a water shutoff valve, repairing bathroom stall dividers and completing paint touch-ups in hallways, door jambs and handrails.

Crews also addressed several long-standing facility issues. Partition walls were constructed in locker rooms to block access to unusable showers and around a boys restroom urinal with a collapsed drain. A new server rack was installed in the information technology room, while damaged wall paneling was replaced in multiple classrooms.

Playground improvements were also completed in preparation before students return to classes. Maintenance workers removed temporary fencing and the remaining chain-link fence surrounding the preschool playground before removing the old preschool storage shed.

Multiple classrooms were relocated as part of the summer work. Preschool classrooms were emptied, teachers’ materials were moved into new rooms and supplies were gathered for a new third-grade classroom. Additional classroom improvements included painting, installing new plastic wall panels and preparing spaces for incoming teachers.

Larger capital improvements included repairing and applying polyurethane coatings to the floor in the high school’s Welz classroom, as well as refinishing the floors in both the Belle High School big gymnasium and Bland Middle School (BMS) gym.

Custodial staff also reported significant progress with summer cleaning throughout the district.

According to the report, crews began their work at BMS before moving through the district’s buildings, scrubbing and waxing classrooms, cafeterias, bathrooms and hallways. Belle Elementary School cleaning was nearing completion at the time of the report, with work scheduled to move into the high school the first week of July.

The custodial department elected not to strip floors this summer because of the amount of time required with a two-person crew. Instead, staff focused on thoroughly cleaning and waxing existing floors.

Custodian Betty Anderson credited cooperation between departments for helping keep the work on schedule.

“I think we are making good progress and everything is going pretty smooth,” Anderson wrote in her report. “Maintenance has been helping with moving out rooms and moving back in. I believe we’ve had pretty good teamwork to get things done.”