In October of 2020, Assurance Media was contracted to install the low-voltage cabling infrastructure and audiovisual systems for the renovated 95,000 square foot Milton Elementary School located in Milton, Delaware. Milton Elementary School originally opened in 1932 and to preserve elements of the historic building, the architects created a design that incorporated the original gym, auditorium, entrance, and many of the existing wood and brick architectural features. The blending of the existing architecture with the needs of a new educational building required our team to strategically plan the cable pathways and drops. By utilizing the attic space our team was able to run cables throughout the school so that no cables were exposed.

In addition to installing smartboards in each classroom, a LightSpeed system was also installed to help students be able to hear the teacher from anywhere in the room. The teacher wears a microphone around her neck and her voice is amplified and comes out of the four in-lay ceiling speakers. The Assurance Media team has experience installing this technology before at the Sussex Consortium and that experience allowed us to install this system efficiently. In this case, our team had to find a solution that could incorporate the shelf in a way that is functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Innovative sound systems were not limited to the classroom for this project, our team installed sound spheres in the gymnasium and speakers in the auditorium. The sound spheres were chosen as the sound solution for the gymnasium because of their shape and ability to cover a large area with sound. The shape of the speaker and its placement make it almost invisible. Unless you were looking directly at the gymnasium ceiling, you would never notice the speakers. To install the sound spheres our audiovisual technicians used a scissor lift. The sphere itself was mounted to a metal support and the cables running to the speaker are not visible. Our technicians took great care to be sure there would be no exposed cables cluttering the gym’s ceiling. A total of four sound spheres were installed in the gym. If another speaker system was used, at least double the number of speakers would have been needed.