Tyler

By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer

Tyler ISD trustees will have a special meeting at 11:30 a.m. Friday to consider approving floor plans for three of the new schools the district will build as part of its recently-approved bond election.

The board will meet in Room B-1 of the TISD Administration Building, 1319 New Sunnybrook Drive.

Floor plans and exterior elevations for Clarkston, Orr and Woods elementary schools will be up for approval at Friday's meeting.

Officials will show off the designs for the schools -- Orr and Woods will have similar designs to the Jack and Douglas elementary school model, with some slight modifications. Jack and Douglas were among the seven new schools built in the Phase 1 bond election initiated in 2004.

Clarkston Elementary will have a different design than those schools built in Phase 1 because of the land on which it sits.

All three schools will be built on land where the current campus sits.

"We really began this work a while back, in terms of the design, and we need to get the final nod of approval from the board on those so we'll be able to proceed with the construction documents that will be necessary for us to go to bids with those," TISD Superintendent Dr. Randy Reid said. Reid said that board members, at different times, as well as the district's leadership team and the principals of those schools have provided input on these designs.

He expects that the district will bid these projects for construction in late January.

Voters approved the $124.9 million TISD bond election on Nov. 4, authorizing the district to replace six campuses: Clarkston, Griffin, Jones, Orr and Woods elementary schools as well as the St. Louis School-Wayne D. Boshears Center for Exceptional Programs, which is a school for students with special needs.

Designs for the other two buildings the district will construct as part of the bond program -- Griffin Elementary and the Jones/Boshears joint school -- may be considered by the board at its regular December board meeting or after the Christmas holidays, Reid said.

The district is still finalizing plans to purchase land for a new Griffin Elementary. The board recently approved the purchase of land for the new Jones/Boshears campus. It is located on State Highway 31 West, near Loop 323, behind the Westwood Shopping Center.

The board also will have a study session on the district's CSCOPE curriculum during Friday's special meeting.

Teachers spent two days this summer being trained on the 5E model of instruction and the district's new online curriculum tool called CSCOPE, both aimed at helping boost the level of instruction in TISD classrooms this school year.

The 5E model of teaching is the new standard at TISD designed to engage students more in learning and help them think on a higher level. That model is embedded within the new CSCOPE online curriculum. The five Es are "engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate."

Reid said when trustees and the superintendent had their "Team of Eight" training recently, they discussed having periodic study sessions on topics they felt like were significant and that they needed to be more deeply aware of, such as the CSCOPE curriculum.

He said that on Friday they will show the board sample lessons from CSCOPE to give them an idea of the rigor of the program as well as talk with them about how the implementation of CSCOPE is going.