With first graders poised to move into Highland Elementary School this fall, a few changes were needed within the building. To facilitate that, most teachers are on the move, and new usable space has been created from what used to be storage.
In total, about nine rooms are getting remodeled or renovated for students and services said Highland Principal Chris Trostad. “I think there are nine rooms that we’re doing some remodeling on and renovating,” said Trostad. “Moving the first graders over here necessitates the need to do some rearrangement. We’re rearranging classrooms, so it’s easy to work through. Our ultimate goal is to separate our younger kids and older kids. So fifth and sixth will be on the east end, first through fourth on the west end.”
The remodel includes the removal of two of three locker bays in Highland. One will become a classroom, the other an athletic locker room. The old locker bays will be replaced by lockers right outside the classrooms for first through fourth graders explains Trostad. “It’s amazing how you create usable space from wasted space,” said Trostad. “The lockers were 50 years old, and by updating those and putting them outside the classrooms for first through fourth grade, we’ve opened up two locker bays so we can have two locker rooms, home and away. We don’t have showers or bathrooms, but at least we’ve got a place for the kid in after-school sports to change and lock their stuff up, so it’s not all in the gym. Then we freed up a nice big space for Joan Darco for in the fifth and sixth-grade area for special education.”
Trostad said one of the most beneficial results of the renovations would be that those services that are especially important in the first through fourth grades will be located in that half of the building. “Lots of changes,” said Trostad. “I think for the most part, a lot of people got windows and bigger spaces. And we provided our services – Title, ELL, Special Ed – central locations around our first through fourth graders. I think when it’s all said and done it’s going to be a nice, usable and probably the best designed building its been in quite some time.”
Former storage areas have become usable space said Trostad, and the result is more than 20 teachers relocating within the building. “With the change of first grade coming over and trying to create that school within a school I think twenty-some teachers are relocating to different rooms,” said Trostad. “Cleaning out storage areas has created usable areas too. There was a lot of junk stored for many years so we’re creating usable areas that we couldn’t find before because stuff was stored there for many, many years.”
Teachers come back the last week of August, and the Trostad said that many of the teachers whose rooms are ready to move in have stopped by to arrange their new rooms. Most of the remaining rooms should be available for teachers to move in within the next couple of weeks.
