This time, the locker rooms at West Albany High School are really, really going to be ready.

Managers for the locker room project gave assurances the last week of August that everything would be completed by Sept. 2, the first day of school. They had to take back their words when they found - on Aug. 31 - the doors for the 6-foot lockers had never been delivered.

The doors came Monday, Ed Fitz-Patrick of Heery Corp., which is managing projects under Greater Albany Public Schools' $55 million bond measure, told the Albany School Board. By Wednesday, the locker and team rooms should be "one hundred percent" complete.

District staff members, other contractors and Fitz-Patrick himself spent all Labor Day weekend installing the lockers, trying to be ready on time, he said. It was only on Sunday they discovered the order was incomplete.

The doors now have been delivered, he added. "I physically saw them there myself today," he said, speaking Monday to the board.

Albany resident Brian Berkley took issue with the locker-room delay in a letter to the Democrat-Herald published Monday. He found it "reprehensible" the project wasn't completed during the nearly three-month window without school.

West's locker room was one of dozens of projects to be worked on this summer, Fitz-Patrick said. The district spent $6 million on construction and renovation in August alone.

Further, he said, the visiting team for the Bulldogs' first home football game was aware in advance it would be changing at Memorial Middle School.

"I think everyone did the best they could," he said, adding: Unfinished locker rooms "did not impact the education process."

In other business Monday, the board:

* Voted unanimously to allow a company that constructs cellular phone towers to lease a 60-by-60-foot parcel on district property.

SBA Towers II of Florida will be allowed to install up to three antennas up to 72 feet tall on the southwest side of the former Grand Prairie School property, on Three Lakes Road. The lease agreement permits the installation in exchange for $12,000 annual payment to the district.

* Received reports from district officials detailing the first few days of school.

A firm enrollment figure has not yet been calculated - the district is having trouble making the transition to a new regional computer system designed to better track enrollment, attendance and grades - but so far it looks like the expected 9,300 students have indeed arrived, Superintendent Maria Delapoer said.