Construction at Weston Elementary School is now in the home stretch.

In fact, Bill Draa, the outgoing superintendent at Ripon Unified – he’ll be around through the end of August in time for the planned grand re-opening of Weston while continuing to get the ball rolling with plans for Colony Oak Elementary School, which is the other part of the voter-approved $25.2 million bond measure – said that work led by C.T. Brayton & Sons is “98 percent” completed.

“They’re doing mostly cleaning up,” he said on Tuesday.

Draa, who will soon be yielding the top administrative spot to former Colony Oak principal Siegrid “Ziggy” Robeson, has been attending meetings in Sacramento and Fresno on the Lease-Leaseback construction method utilized by public schools including RUSD.

He strongly supports lease-leaseback, dating back to his days when he was superintendent at Banta School District.

Construction at Weston began in July 2014 and is scheduled to be ready in plenty of time for the dedication ceremony planned for early August.

“The project has included transforming the school from old portables learning spaces to new permanent classrooms, and the construction of a new gymnasium,” Draa said.

The old Multi-Purpose Room was converted to office spaces to accommodate student-support services such as the Learning Center Room, Speech Room and the Read 120 Room, to name a few.

This Measure G project, as part of the lease-leaseback, also had money set aside as a contingency plan.

At the previous Ripon Unified school board meeting, Weston Principal Lisa Fereria indicated that the $23,000 in those funds will be used towards landscaping of the modernized campus.