Spokane-based general contractor Leone & Keeble Inc. has started work on a $5.9 million project to modernize and renovate the junior-senior high school in Pomeroy, Wash., located about 115 miles southwest of Spokane.

Pomeroy School District Superintendent Kim Spacek says about 20,000 square feet of the overall 70,000-square-foot Pomeroy Junior-Senior High School that was constructed in 1966 is in need of significant updating.

That portion of the facility includes a gymnasium and locker rooms, the latter of which Spacek says don't meet Title IX gender-equality legal standards. He says the boys' locker room is about three times the size of the girls' locker room.

The modernization project calls for the reconfiguration of that space into four new locker rooms—two each for boys and girls—since the school serves both middle and high school grades, Spacek says.

The rest of the school building was constructed in 1980, he says, and includes 11 classrooms. He says the school's main office will be demolished and rebuilt, and other upgrades are to be made to an entry foyer that connects the high school and gymnasium area and also serves as the building's main entrance.

Additionally, a science teaching lab that's currently shared between two classrooms will be replaced with separate labs for each classroom, he says.

"We found out that when you have two teachers who like to do labs, it's hard to share," Spacek says.

Other improvements to the school include upgrades to its electrical system and its heating, ventilation, and cooling system. The building also will be wired throughout so that each classroom will have audio-and-video connections for teaching purposes, Spacek says.

He says Leone & Keeble began work on the project earlier this month, and that the overall project is expected to be complete in late summer of next year. Half of the modernization costs are being funded by a bond measure that voters passed in February 2010, and the rest will be covered by Washington state matching funds, he says.

The architect for the project is Design West Architects PA, of Pullman, Wash.

Pomeroy Junior-Senior High school currently serves about 170 students in grades seven through 12, although the school has space for about 300 students, Spacek says. The small farming town's overall population in 2010 was about 1,425, U.S. Census Bureau data show.