Schools have new look for fall classes

The Mountain Home School District has been busy this summer, giving two schools a new facelift, closing another, and getting ready for a major wave of federal- and state-mandated testing standards that students will face when they return to school next Tuesday.

Although overall enrollments in the district are expected to be up slightly, declining enrollments on base has forced the district to mothball Stephensen Middle School this year.

"We're not going to strip that building, because we're planning on reopening it in the future," Supt. of School Jerrie LeFevre said. The district has moved out some furniture needed in other buildings and most of the technology in the school, but other areas, such as the library, will remain. Le Fevre said the district would reassess the building's status in the spring.

Liberty Elementary on base has undergone extensive "relocation" of facilities to better group the grade 4-6 students who will be attending that school, and all educational materials and furnishings for third grade students have been moved back to the base Primary School, which will return to a grade 1-3 environment.

The seventh grade from Stephensen will be bused to Hacker Middle School in town, and that has resulted in some major changes at that school.

The fifth grade will be moved into the annex building (the old high school) and inside Maintenance Supervisor Phil Rainey's crews were busy putting the finishing touches on a complete remodeling job as the start of school approaches.

New paint, railings, even classrooms have marked the remodeling. One classroom has been built out of the old stage, but it looks like the most modern of all the classrooms in the historic school building. Some other large classrooms have been split into smaller rooms, and new lighting has been installed throughout the facility, giving it a crisp, clean look throughout.

Another major change in look is the new roof over North Elementary. The steepled roof replaces the old, flat roof, which should result in much longer life to the roof and consequent long-term maintenance savings for the distict. The old roof, first built in 1964, would have required $700,000 to replace and would not have lasted half as long as the new roof is expected to last.

In addition, the old boiler was replaced with a more modern heating and air conditioning system. The air conditioning, which only cost $50,000 as part of the $1.5 million roofing project, is the first for any school in the district and will allow the district to offer a more comfortable setting for summer school classes. LeFevre said energy efficiencies of the new system should result in it paying for itself within 10 years. The system is expected to have a 40-year life.

The high school also is seeing some changes.

The old parking lot, which Le Fevre described as "the world's largest pothole," has been resurfaced and the area around it landscaped. "That building was built in 1951, and it's been renovated several times on the inside, but never the outside. Now, you can see grass, trees and flowers, and it makes a much better impression for people visiting the school for the first time."

The old weight room on the second floor of the gymnasium also has been moved. The weights, often dropped on the floor, were causing problems with the ceiling in the locker rooms below it. So the district leased the old white shop building across from the high school and this summer Tiger Booster members and students moved the weights and helped paint the building inside and out.

The district also worked on the track at Tiger Field this year, resurfacing the now seven-year-old track and adding some concrete barriers that will cut down on dirt blowing onto the track.

West Elementary will see one of the most dramatic changes inside with the establishment of a third-grade classroom that is truely a "classroom of the future." Each student using the classroom will have an individual computer. Keyboards designed for young children combined with flat-screen displays make it look like a classroom from a science fiction movie.

At the front of the classroom is a "smart board" interactive screen that allows an instructor to project work on the screen from his or any student's computer. The screen also can be used to link with more than a dozen other schools around the state and a camera in the classroom, which is designed to automatically focus on any person talking, can send video images to any of the other schools.

The classroom is part of a pilot project among a select few schools in the state and is funded by the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation.

This summer, teachers from the Mountain Home and other school districts used the classroom for instruction in how to use high technology in the classrooms.

Classroom high technology is now standard throughout the district. Besides computer labs in every school, every teacher has at least one computer in their classroom and this year all grades and records about students will be handled by computer.

That will allow the district to launch another innovation, also part of a pilot project involving 15 school districts in Idaho, in which parents will be able to go on-line and access their child's records.

Called "School Notes," that project won't be available for a couple more weeks, but when implemented, parents will be given passwords that will let them look at their child's grades, homework assignments and behavior reports, by accessing them from any internet-capable computer. Parents also will be able to leave notes for teachers (and vice versa), providing an interactive environment for parent-teacher communication.

Students also will be spending a lot of time at computers taking state and federally mandate achievement tests during the year and facing major changes in curriculum (more on that in next week's issue).

The district will not open the school in Atlanta this year. Students there will learn by "virtual reality" primary and secondary schools on the internet. The Pine school will be opened, however.

And for the first time in years, there were no major changes in attendance zones, although, as noted, grade levels have been moved around considerably in the district.