Students at Colony Oak Elementary School are leaving their mark.

They recently signed their names on the wood frames on the “C” wing of the modernization project.

“That was before the (drywall) boards were put up,” said Deanna Shirlock at Monday’s Ripon Unified school board meeting.

She’s the project manager at CT Brayton & Sons. Shirlock provided an update of the Colony Oak reconstruction efforts.

“Everything is going well and going quickly,” she said.

This includes the framing and canopy steel beams for Buildings’ A, B, C, F and G. Shirlock noted that the pre-framing for Building E continues while putting up the walls at Building D are still a work in progress.

“It’s starting to click (at Colony Oak) – we have to take advantage of the summer months,” she added.

The hope here is for this voter-approved Measure G project to be completed sometime in September. Because of the limited space on the Colony Oak campus, Shirlock along with Superintendent Siegrid ‘Ziggy’ Robeson indicated that several of the portable classrooms will remain intact.

Altogether, five portables including a computer lab will remain at Colony Oak as classroom spaces.

“I just want to make sure that the kids will be in the new classrooms once the new facilities are completed,” said board President Chad Huskey, who quickly received some assurances.

Robeson noted that the portables are also necessary as a contingency plan for classroom space if Proposition 39 fails to receive voter-support – necessary is two-third or 55 percent ‘yes’ votes for passage of the $38.5 million bond measure for district-wide facilities improvements – during the Nov. 6 elections.

One of the portables will be used as custodial space while the other for Physical Education and a meeting place for the Colony Oak Parent Faculty Club, according to Robeson.