Seventh-grader Kelsey Couture goes to school in one of Wescott Junior High’s portable classrooms. She said one of its doors doesn’t shut so it’s cold all the time, and the floor is uneven so things sometimes slide off her desk. She and her classmates put their stuff on the floor in a cubby because there aren’t enough lockers in the school.
When she does get into the school for art class, the classroom is “very, very crowded.” As are the hallways, where there’s “pushing and shoving, especially at the end of the day.” When her class eats lunch, it’s in an exercise room instead of a cafeteria.
These are just some of the challenges Westbrook’s junior high students face. The City Council, School Committee and superintendent are hoping a new school will alleviate the problems with the help of state money.
In the state’s latest cycle, Wescott Junior High School was ninth among 68 schools that applied to Maine for new school funding. As of this summer, the school is one of the 12 schools on the “protected list” – schools guaranteed to get money from the state in 2007-2008 for renovation or new construction. Although they don’t yet know how much money the city will receive, Westbrook school and city officials have begun the process of planning a new school.
“We are assured, upon successful completion of the approval process, to either renovate or build new,” said Westbrook Schools Superintendent Stan Sawyer.
Upon acceptance of a plan worked out by the city with continuous input from the state, “the state pays 100 percent of everything they approve, including the purchase of land and sports fields,” whether renovating or building new.
Path to state approval
To begin the process, the state has provided the city with preliminary specifications of how big the school will be and how big each of its components will be, based on certain standards they use, including number of students. These specifications include the square footage of the school, the number of athletic fields it can have, the size of its parking lots, the number of lockers, and the size of its gym and cafeteria.
The city has hired South Portland-based Planning Decisions, a consulting firm that does demographic studies, to determine how much Westbrook can reasonably expect its population to grow in the coming years. After the city provides this study to Augusta, the state will use the numbers to provide Westbrook with final specifications.
Once the city receives those final numbers, Westbrook residents will have to decide in a vote if they want to use city money to do more than what the state has approved. Residents will vote to approve the basic concept of the new school as paid for by the state and then separately to approve any city costs for additional features for the school. One feature which may come into play in Westbrook would be an auditorium – the state doesn’t pay for auditoriums.
“So that people have a choice. Do you want the building? Do you want an auditorium?” said Sawyer. “This is a very exciting project. It’s a very exciting time for Wescott Junior High teachers and staff. I hope the voters approve it.”
If the city does build new, there may be another referendum on what to do with the old building. Mayor Bruce Chuluda has set up a committee to look into possible uses for the building as a city resource if no longer used as a school.
Upon approval, the architecture firm hired by the city – Auburn-based Harriman Associates – will work with the state on a design for the school. Already, Daniel Cecil of Harriman Associates is preparing a study of whether to renovate or build new, which the state will then analyze. Once the design phase begins, he will be meeting with the state every three weeks or so.
Cecil predicts it will take approximately nine months to complete a design, then 20 to 35 months for construction, depending on whether the city renovates or builds new. “Renovations take a lot more time because, obviously, you have to keep using the building,” Cecil said at an informational meeting at Wescott last month. “So, typically, what you end up doing is working in an area, clearing everybody out of that area, (then moving them back when it’s done)…basically sort of move around the building until everything is done.”
The state tends to favor renovation instead of building new. However, Westbrook officials will be pushing for a new building and banking on the awkward design of the Wescott school to bolster their position.
“It really is difficult to learn in this building and probably has been for years,” said City Councilor John O’Hara and committee co-chair at the Feb. 15 meeting. “The building doesn’t lend itself to being a happy place for an education. It’s just that the building is tired. It’s old. It really needs to be moth-balled and put away.”
“The main problem with the building is that the areas originally designed as common areas have been blocked off (and made into classrooms),” said Wescott Principal Brian Mazjanis. “Teachers can hear each other’s classrooms. They have had to adjust the way they teach to be good neighbors.”
Other problems include poor lighting, which causes a “cave effect in the classrooms” in the middle of the building and the fact that the hallways, cafeterias, and other common areas were built for fewer students than are attending the school now, according to Mazjanis.
“It’s hard to do things like showing movies, games and activities – any activity where there’s movement,” said Sandra Abbott, a teacher at the school. “You constantly have to be aware of the class next to you.”
“The school’s just falling apart,” said seventh-grader Stephanie Brown.
Sixth-grader Cameron Goodwin said she’d “like to see a new school with closed classrooms as the open classrooms we have now can be very disruptive while you are trying to focus on learning.”
The promise of a new school
A new school would offer an entirely different educational experience from the one now available the school. Wescott was designed in an open air concept that has now morphed into a partitioning system with “classrooms” separated by partitions. New schools are being built in the “school-within-a-school” concept, which divides the school into various community areas. Students spend the majority of their time in a specific core area, where they have most of their classes, their computer labs, and their lockers. They leave the area for specialty classes such as art or music. Studies have shown that students tend to do better in this environment.
Studies have also shown that kids learn better in more natural environments. “Our schools use lots of natural light, materials and colors,” said Cecil, whose firm designed schools in Biddeford, North Berwick, Kennebunk, and even Scarborough. “Those are soothing pallets for kids, and they seem to react well to that. They do better.”
The Scarborough High School addition designed by Harriman Associates included the latest in video data and sound systems in classrooms, where students can simply plug in a computer and make a presentation or project Web pages or movies off the Internet. A “smart board” at the school provides students with a “blackboard” on which they can write, record digitally, project video, and choose answers to questions – the board tells them whether they’re right.
At the Biddeford Middle School, the architecture firm designed an 800-seat theater that serves the entire community. The theater has an advanced theatrical lighting and sound system, full dramatic capability, and flexibility for different uses for the community.
Cecil said that a new design for Wescott would be more efficient in its energy usage. It would group together areas in the school that might be used by the public in the evening, such as the cafeteria, so that the rest of the school could be shut down for the night.
A new school would also provide school district and community safety services that the Wescott school is not capable of providing. The school building committee wants to ensure that the school has generator capability in the event of an emergency such as an ice storm that knocks out electricity in the community.
For now, the school building committee is working on a plan to expand or build new on wooded land adjacent to the Wescott school. However, the city “is also looking into other parcels in Westbrook, so if the state doesn’t like this parcel, there are other parcels,” said RenA?© Daniel, chair of the building committee. “We are trying to anticipate every possible glitch that the state will come up with.”
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