Gastineau Community School’s first day of school this year is Monday, but much of the school is still a construction zone.

The elementary school in Douglas is nearly two-thirds of the way through a three-year renovation project. Last year, the classroom wing of the school was renovated, and next year, the school’s aging playground is set to get a facelift.

Renovations this year have spruced up the library, remodeled the staff office area and expanded the student commons.

A mechanical failure at the Dimond Park Aquatic Center prompted it to close for part of Wednesday morning.

Aquatics manager Kathrin Millhorn attributed the trouble to pool equipment she said may have been affected by a power disruption. An outage occurred in part of the Mendenhall Valley just after 7:20 a.m. Wednesday morning.

A user of the facility emailed Thursday morning to say the leisure pool was closed as of 6:40 a.m., when he arrived at the facility, some time before the outage occurred.

Members of the Juneau School District Board of Education and school district officials pointed out improvement among many grade levels on one testing metric while criticizing Adequate Yearly Progress standards at a worksession before the board’s regular meeting Tuesday evening.

Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich said that AYP, a measurement mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind program that requires schools to meet statewide standards in 40 categories in order to pass, is an unfair assessment of schools’ progress.

The City and Borough of Juneau Assembly adopted ordinances placing a five-year extension of the 1 percent temporary sales tax and a $25 million bond issue for capital projects on the October ballot Monday evening after hearing public comment on the initiatives.

The sizable majority of members of the public who commented on the sales tax ordinance at the well-attended meeting, including Juneau Arts and Humanities Council executive director Nancy DeCherney and Sealaska Heritage Institute chief executive officer Lee Cadinger, offered support for it.