After more than 18 months, the new wing of the Frisco ISD CTE Center is open and has been hosting students since the start of school, but there’s a feature that’s somewhat new to the district.
Now able to host as many as 2-thousand students at one time, the latest update to the CTE Center added 48,000 square feet of space. However, one feature that could make a difference in the event of severe weather.
“We’re now required to have a tornado shelter system in place when we build new schools,” CTE Assistant Principal Travis Volk said. “So the interior 2 story part of the G wing, is what we call it, is now tornado resistant.”
New building code ASCE 7-22 now requires that high occupancy buildings be made tornado resistant and with this weather feature a part of the CTE Center, there’s now a place for the entire building to gather if needed.
“The best part is, it’s big enough that we can move all of our students from the entire building down into this wing for shelter,” Volk said. “It is a concrete vault, pretty much, all the way around and on the ceiling too. The windows [can also] withstand up to 200+ mile an hour projectiles.”