Walk-through tied to April 20 Board Conversation with CESA

Staff Report

“The board came out of closed session at 8:56 PM. Motion by Carlson, seconded by Lewallen to approve administrative contracts as presented. On a roll call vote, Verbeten voted no and the rest voted yes. Motion passes.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:58 PM.”

Such was the report from the outcome of the closed session following the Monday April 25 School Board meeting, sent by superintendent Jeff Koenig. Going into closed session earlier pursuant to 19.85 (c) of the state statutes, Verbeten’s abstention would likely have been because he is married to a teacher at Stanley-Boyd, so that voting on a district financial matter would have presented a potential conflict of interest.

Prior to the closed session on administrative contract or meeting held prior, however, the Stanley-Boyd school board got a tour of the school in which one member of the public as well as press participated. The takeaways were many, with Koenig leading the presentation.

Exiting the lobby to go down the hallway southwest, the first tour stop was the hallway aligned at a perpendicular angle where the pool and gym met, with Koenig pointing out a water leak from the drop-down paneled hallway ceiling.

From there it was on to the elementary school office, composed at present of Elementary Principal Dean Lew’s office, an old sick room, and the reception area. Most needed for the elementary school office was better visibility for the outside, with a drive-through style window not quite ideal to the task.

From the (rather cramped) elementary school office it was on to the gym, being used for lunch “due to COVID,” while it had only one storage closet and there was a reported water issue underneath the gym floor, though inspection had revealed there was no asbestos, once the miracle fireproof material of the early twentieth century, now linked to cancer.

As the tour progressed to Phy Ed locker room 603, it was remarked by board member Lance Carlson that one could get lost in the building if they didn’t know their way around. Composed of three main parts, the high school area was built around 1960, the middle school in the 1970s to 80s, and the elementary school in the 90s, each bound by its time period of construction and concepts therein.

From Room 603 it was on to Room 602 close by, built for locker room use but used to house janitorial supplies among its present uses. The reason? It wasn’t being used for its original purpose at present.

From Room 602 with metal lockers it was on to the dated ‘open concept’ consisting of classrooms with metal doors and metal walls as well, with these installed after it was determined that the ‘open concept’ wasn’t all that good at keeping student attention for instructional and learning purposes—although great for waving to friends across the way.

Live and learn, as they say.

See SCHOOL MAINTENANCE, Page 10

Tour participants were shown around Stanley-Boyd prior to the April board meeting. In this closup to the left, the gym floor is pulling away from the adjacent wall and will need to be addressed at some point. Staff photos. SCHOOL MAINTENANCE

FROM PAGE 9 The tour then went to the elementary gym and old IMC, or media center, with a sign on the wall asking a pointed question after the observation.

“Dinosaurs didn’t read,” the wall sign said. “Now they’re extinct. Coincidence?”

Alongside such learning signs throughout the school were several inspirationally themed ones, including the observation that, “the future of the world is in this school.”

As to the old IMC, it was shared that there were issues with the light switches, with some classrooms accessible only by walking through other ones. Not the best learning environment, to say the least. On the wall, meanwhile, a math tower laid out the proper building block approach to numbers: first learning addition, followed with subtraction; then multiplication, followed with division, and once the basics were laid, exponents topped with parentheses! Figures in parentheses represent a single unit, mathematically speaking.

From the IMC it was on to the Middle School Locker Room, used by wrestling and middle school football but with a wall that had settling issues, if still structurally sound.

In addition, and perhaps showing the boundaries of its time, the locker room equipment area had been designed for dual use by boys and girls, with the door on each side of the room lockable when the other gender wasn’t using it—only one at a time, in other words.

From locker facilities it was on to middle school instruction space, where Carlson again made an observation.

“How’s the air?” he asked Tim Troyer and David Ludy. “Some of these classrooms are pretty small.”

“It’s all equally balanced,” Troyer replied. When the group reached middle school maintenance it was time for an observation, with Koenig saying that legacy students might remember it as the tech ed room, located as it was in the west of the building as a whole. With smartboards replacing more traditional chalkboards in classrooms, it was into the future—and back to the high school library, built as part of an addition in 1999. The tour undertaken by the board was to assess both needed repairs (such as the gym floor) and those ideas presented at the April 20 Board Conversation, though no plans as such have been made in regards to specific designs or infrastructure, among which on April 20 were Twenty-First Century learning spaces.

With Koenig earlier saying that he didn’t think the proposed Board Conversation items were something the district should go to referendum for, chances are the Twenty-First century spaces will be just as dated one day as some current district infrastructure is now—it’s the trade-off for being confined within time and space. Time to start working on a flux capacitor, or similar device. Go S.T.E.A.M!