R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press Shown is the welding lab currently used by the Delta-Schoolcraft Intermediate School District (ISD)’s Career and Technical Education Program. This lab is located within Escanaba’s Junior/Senior High School, and the ISD will soon be vacating it for a brand-new and more accomodating welding shop located in its own building nearby.

ESCANABA — Construction and conversion have been underway at educational facilities in Escanaba. For years, two districts — the Delta-Schoolcraft Intermediate School District (ISD) and Escanaba Area Public Schools — have been sharing spaces in each other’s buildings. While amicable, the setup is not ideal for students, staff or administration, but it should be partially rectified this winter.

The ISD has been utilizing an area in the Escanaba High School to serve as as its welding lab. The 2600-square-foot space has 11 booths, plus a couple of portable ones. The other machines in the shop make for a crowded space, and one that doesn’t allow for as many students as the program could accommodate (22). But other detriments of using this lab lie with the fact that it isn’t in the same building as the rest of the ISD.

In the Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, there is often collaboration between fields. To do that now, students have to cross a parking lot between the ISD and the high school — granted, they are near one another, but the new wing of the ISD has been designed with intention.

“It is time for us to update the space to better educate students about careers in manufacturing,” said Trent Bellingar, CTE Principal/Director at the Delta-Schoolcraft ISD. “This (new welding shop) is located between our engineering program, called Product Design and Development, and our Machining Technology. This will help our students work collaboratively within those three programs to mimic a real manufacturing facility.”

There are further reasons to have operations within one building — one real example came last week, when a student passed out in the lab housed on the other school’s campus. The student was treated by Escanaba High School, and the ISD was notified minutes after the incident, but the situation was not ideal, and Bellingar looks forward to keeping students under one roof and in the care of one administration — at least for the portion of their day spent in CTE classes.

The ISD broke ground in the spring of 2024. In addition to the welding shop — which encompasses 4000 square feet and will include 22 welding stations plus a computer numerical control (CNC) plasma cutting table, storage space and a grinding room — the addition to the building at 2525 S. 3rd St. also has office space for the district’s special education department. At present, staff of the department, which provides services to school districts across two counties, does not have actual offices; Bellingar said that some have been working out of literal closets.

“They may be in here two days a week, but it gives them this space to be a home base, because when they’re in the local (schools), we can no longer expect the locals to give them much space, because they don’t have much space either,” Bellingar explained, pointing out that proper offices will allow the special education professionals confidentiality and consulting space.

All in all, it’s a $3.2 million project, most of which has been funded through grants and donations — Bellingar said that $500,000 came from the Kobasic Foundation and that Senator Gary Peters and Representative Jack Bergman appropriated $1.9 million of the federal budget for this fiscal year.

Costs include a new gas pipeline, water, HVAC and more. A new water line runs sprinklers to the facility; the older parts of the building, erected in the 1980s and modified in the ’90s, did not have sprinklers. A new type of ventilation system will clean and return air from inside the building, rather than use additional energy to bring in outside air and heat it.

Work is being carried out by local contractors Roy Ness, Billy Electric, Independent Roofing, DeGrand Construction, Bosk Paint, Little Bay Concrete, United Contractors, Jeff’s Glass and others. Bellingar was proud to share that several of the people on the job are graduates of the ISD’s CTE program.

t is estimated that the ISD should be able to begin using — or at least moving into — the new addition by the end of January.