Aberdeen School District stores and repurposes items when possible

A large section of the Stewart Building, the former location of Robert Gray Elementary School, can best be described as a showroom and storage area for items no longer used around the Aberdeen School District.

A large section of the Stewart Building at 900 Cleveland St., the former location of Robert Gray Elementary School, can best be described as a showroom and storage area for items no longer used around the Aberdeen School District.

Recent additions to that collection were 20 old-fashioned tube televisions.

Today’s TVs are sleek, lightweight flat-screen products. Heavy, technologically outdated televisions weighing up to 80 pounds each had spent years suspended from classroom walls.

“They are now a hazard,” Superintendent Tom Opstad said to school board members earlier this month.

The old TVs are expected to be a rough sell to anyone because the technology is outdated. If no one is interested in buying them, the district will turn them over for recycling, Opstad said.

The location is primarily a holding area filled with items that can be re-purposed.

And many of these objects are.

Staff members from various school sites can go there to find chairs, desks, instructional aides and other items no longer in use around the district. Many of the items are far from new but not so overused that they should instead be thrown away, said Judy Holliday, director of Teaching and Learning, Technology department.

One example is a large group of iPad carts that double as safes and recharging stations for iPads used by students. The carts were being used in the district’s middle school classrooms, but are now going to be made available in elementary school classrooms.

“They are only about five years old,” Holliday said about the carts.

Some of the younger elementary school students will receive iPads previously used by older students. These will be outfitted with age-appropriate applications.

Also in the Stewart Building is a workshop where people repair and modify items.

Scores of telephones used before the district updated its phone system earlier this month are up for grabs, too.

These phones will be offered to other school districts that continue to use the phone system Aberdeen no longer has.

“Schools have first dibs on such items,” Holliday said.

The public has the opportunity to purchase items not wanted by schools.

Before the phone system changeover, the district needed to buy more phones. It bought used phones from another district rather than spend more money on new versions of the old model when it became apparent the system was going to be replaced.

Opstad said the new phone system should serve the district for “10 or 15 years.”

A significant portion of the surplus and storage area has a similar purpose: It’s where the school district keeps a large walk-in freezer for food storage.

Food Services district is also headquartered in the Stewart Building.

“We even store the chairs used for graduations here,” Holliday said.

Aberdeen School District stores and repurposes items when possible