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!