After a month of extensive efforts to repair the auditorium, the completion date is quickly approaching with estimates for the completion date ranging from Friday to the latter part of January.

“The repair process has been going really quickly,” assistant principal Phil Brown said. “The repair guys were able to come in and take out all of the damaged materials and get everything back into proper working order so now they’re just putting the finishing touches on everything.”

As the final repairs in the auditorium are completed, theater director Heather Willingham anticipates getting back on track with students preparing for the UIL season.

“We’ll be able to get back on schedule,” Willingham said. “We are in the middle of UIL right now so we don’t have a stage where we can perform right now and rehearse so it’s going to make a really big difference for us when we need to get on our feet and start working on that.”

Throughout the reconstruction, fine arts students have had to adapt to working in different areas to ensure that the repair process does not slow down their plans.

“We’ve had to relocate to other locations when we play concerts,” junior Tay Nguyen said. “We still do practice and when we have full orchestra rehearsals we practice in the band hall because it’s bigger.”

Unable to use the auditorium since Dec. 7, teachers have been maintaining students’ focus by working around the lack of a stage.

“It hasn’t been as much of an issue as it could have been,” Willingham said. “Right now we’re doing what’s called table work which is when you’re dissecting the script and figuring out the meanings of things and that usually doesn’t happen on its feet anyways.”