BCFT Blog

Frank & I attended last night’s meeting of the New Elementary School Construction Committee … and were the only 2 non-committee members in the room.  Almost all the committee members were present; shortly after the meeting came to order, I counted 20 heads around the table, including chairman Robert Nelson (plus Dr. Scriber, Ann Thomas and Joy Walker, who are not technically on the committee).  A couple of people came in late.

The bulk of the meeting was taken up reviewing the changes the architect, Steve Elliott, had made based on last week’s meeting, which we could not attend due to other obligations. 

Since it will be some time before the plans for this new school are published where we can ALL see them, I’ll describe the building for you here. 

It’s going to be built at the corner of Rodeo Drive and West Road (Hwy 178); if you were to stand on West Road and look up the hill toward the school district’s Admin Office, the new school would be on your right. 

Our first impression of the plans on the screen was “s—p—r—a—w—l” … the footprint of the building is huge! 

As the plan stands now, it’s basically a large rectangle made up of double rows of classrooms & support/storage rooms, with 8-classroom wings at the lower-left (5th grade), the upper-right (3rd) and the lower-right (4th) corners; these wings will extend horizontally out from the rectangle.  Cafeteria/kitchen and gym are more-or-less centered along the top leg of the rectangle.  Library (sorry — media center!) is part of the central admin cluster in the middle of the bottom leg of the rectangle.  The interior of the rectangle will become a courtyard, with paved patio areas for outdoor learning opportunities.

Room arrangement was discussed quite a bit.  The general plan assigns each grade level to a wing plus some of the classrooms along the legs of the rectangle, depending upon each grade’s needs.  There will be 2 self-contained classrooms with a large restroom/shower area for them to share.  There will be 2 music rooms and 2 art rooms, up at the top of the left leg of the rectangle; each grade level will have its own computer lab, plus there will be another computer lab in the media center.  There will be an on-site parent resource center and a separate volunteer room.  Each grade-level wing will have its own restroom facilities, and there will be other restrooms scattered around the building.  Each grade level will have its own teacher workroom, and the 3rd grade will have a separate book room.

The 5th graders will have a playground area on the left side of the building (between their wing and the top of the rectangle) and the 3rd & 4th graders will share a playground out behind the 3rd grade wing (top right).

There will be 2 assistant principals (3rd & 4th grades) and one building principal (5th grade).  The assistant principals will have their own small offices in the appropriate wing of the building (along with an office/reception area), and the building principal will have a larger office in the central admin cluster at the front of the building.

There will be 2 traffic patterns for delivering/retrieving students, one for the 3rd & 4th graders along the right-hand side of the building, and one for the 5th graders along the front of the building.  Both will be accessed from West Road.  Mike Walker (who chairs that particular subcommittee) has worked with the MH Street Dept and others to determine the best path for the cars to take to allow enough “stack” space that there should be no cars lined up on the street/highway off school property.  Those plans are not carved in stone yet, because the architect does not have an official survey of the land to determine exactly where everything is and/or should go.  There was some talk of moving the 5th grade traffic lanes a little farther away from the 3rd & 4th grade traffic lanes, but that will reduce the amount of room available for “stacking” cars.  More on this at next week’s meeting, I’m sure.

School buses come in at the top left of the property, off Rodeo Drive, and drop the kids near the cafeteria/gym.  There will be a partially covered loading/unloading area, and they will take advantage of the proximity to the cafeteria for bus-loading in bad weather.

When asked how they were doing on square footage and costs, the architect said that after making last week’s changes, they were 50 square feet shy of the maximum they’ve been approved for by the state.  The changes made last night (moving classrooms around) will not add any square footage to the plan.

Frank & I plan to attend as many of these meetings as we possibly can, and we encourage you to do the same.  The meetings are open to the public, and public comment is allowed.  Next meeting is set for Monday, May 19th, at 6 pm in the meeting room at the school district Admin Office, 2465 Rodeo Drive.

Suzan Kaye
BCFT