The new JK to Grade 12 school was unveiled to the public last week.
Bluewater District board officials and representatives from WDSS, Brant?Central and Walkerton Public took questions about the facility that will amalgamate the staff and student populations of the three local schools.
The demolition of the east wing of WDSS is expected to begin later this spring, but the Board is still awaiting final approval from the education ministry for the building plans presented at the meeting.
The Ministry of Education gave its first approval of the project in June 2009, but the ministry requires three levels of approval, explained Al Gibb, Bluewater’s manager of Plant Services.
“On June 7 the Ministry of Education approved the new school for Walkerton. The criteria were 900 students; that we build on this site; and that it be approximately 107,000 square feet,” said Gibb.
However, the actual design is 3,000 to 4,000 square feet bigger and is designed for 930 students. Gibb said they were given the go-ahead by board trustees and have submitted their plans to the ministry for approval.
“We have done this before in Bluewater, almost” said area superintendent Jean Stephenson. “We do have two schools that are K to 12 in our district. One has existed for a very long period of time. We have come through the blending of an elementary school and a secondary school — with the Peninsula Shores example in Wiarton — but this one is different again because now we’re blending three schools. It’s going to be kind of like a blended family concept, and we know there are lots of examples of blended families in our community that work famously.”
Some of the main features of the building plan, as explained by Supervisor of Building Services Mike Smith, include a cafetorium, with a stage adjoining to the music and drama rooms, two 1,000 sq. ft. science labs as well as a science lecture room, and a student commons.
“The gymnasium is a full size regulation basketball court.?It’s the exact same size as WDSS has presently. A retractable door separates the main gym from the second gym,” Smith said.
A second retractable wall can divide the main gym in two, creating three separate spaces. Bleachers in the main gym will accomodate approximately 200 people, and a weight room on the second floor will look out over the main gymnasium. Construction of a two-floor school frees up more land for green space, Smith said.
“There is less hard surface with this new contruction than there is right now. (The proposed) foot print, even though it’s 110,000 sq. ft, is only 55,000 on one floor. (The current) footprint is 130,000, and then you have the parking lot on top of that. There will be a lot more green space,” he said.
Exterior features of the school will include a fenced Kindergarten playground, an elementary playground including a paved section, a fenced grass field and junior soccer field, as well as a second full-sized field and track for intermediate and senior activities. Different entrances and exits will allow secondary and elementary outdoor activities to remain separated.
To correspond with the increase in green around the school, Smith said a lot of green features are also being included in the school.
“The rooms will all have daylight harvesting. That means there are sensors in the light fixtures that sense how much natural light is coming in the room and then, through a unique ballast system, it dims the lights so that you always maintain the same light level in the room — a mix of natural and artificial light. All the rooms have occupancy sensors in for lighting, so the lights will come on and off automatically as the room is in use or not,” he said.
Gibb hopes these features will help the school achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design status.
“We are very confident that we can get LEED certification and we see this as being a LEED Silver building,” he said.
Several questions raised at the meeting were regarding the safety and security of younger students in shared spaces in the school. Principal of Walkerton Public and Brant Central School Paul Robinson addressed those concerns.
“These kids ride the same busses together, and many live in the same houses, so we’re not anymore concerned than you would be as their parents. But we want to make sure we have a learning environment for children from the age of almost four up to kids who are eligible to vote,” he said, “The thing people don’t realize when they look at the diagrams is that elementary students spend 90 percent of their day in the classroom. If they’re not in their home room, then they’re in the gym, or the library or the music room. Other than that they’re pretty self-contained. It means they’re not out wandering the halls like secondary students do.”
Smith also said separate washrooms and lunchtimes in the cafetorium will help buffer the age groups.
“I feel fairly confident that we can help the kids learn how to live in the building in a reasonable way and keep them safe, while at the same time using the strength of a positive learning community where we do interact together,” Stephenson said, “the whole goal is not to stay separated. We do want to use the senior kids to plan things, to run activities, to organize field days, to have winter olympics, and reading buddies, and those kind of things. It’s a natural link that we can make, so we can plan for those kinds of activities and supervise for the rest of it. A school develops a culture as it goes along, so I think we just need to teach them when we get into this building what’s appropriate and what isn’t.”
Also of concern at the meeting was how a move from three buildings to one would affect administrative and custodial staff.
The process for coming up with a name for the new school has yet to begin in earnest but, in the meantime, Stephenson said that in all of their communication they’ve been referring to it as “Walkerton New”.
Gibb stressed that, whether they presently have final approval or not, “Walkerton New” needs to get underway shortly.
“We are going to build this school on budget, and we are going to build a school that meets the requirements of the community,” he said, “If we have to scale back to the original plan we will go there, but we will build this school. We have good experience. We have Wiarton and Hanover behind us. It’s going to be a stretch; we’re tight right now but we have to get started because we’ve got to do this in 18 months. We’ve got to get the grass planted, and the building down, and the parking lot done for September of 2012.”
“We will get the approval.”