Posted 2:49 am Sunday, January 10, 2010
New Elementary Going Up Ahead Of Schedule
Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of stories looking at the construction progress of the schools being built in the $124.9 million 2008 Tyler ISD bond program.
By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer
Jones Elementary Principal Patricia Lewis was amazed this past week when she got to take a peek inside her portion of the new Jones-Boshears Elementary School.
Staff Writer
Jones Elementary Principal Patricia Lewis was amazed this past week when she got to take a peek inside her portion of the new Jones-Boshears Elementary School.
She snapped photos of the progress she saw to show to her staff and students.
"The building is beautiful on the outside, but it's the details that have been taken care of on the inside that are going to make it stand apart," Ms. Lewis said, noting "gorgeous" arches in the library windows and a half spiral staircase at the base of a dome inside the school.
"I am very impressed with the leadership on this site and the progress that they've made in the time that they've had."
The new Jones-Boshears school is taking shape along State Highway 31 West near the intersection with Loop 323, behind the Westwood Shopping Center.
The 135,000-square-foot facility combines Mattie Jones Elementary School with the St. Louis School-Wayne D. Boshears Center for Excep-tional Programs, a school for students with special needs. The square footage includes the special horse arena for the special needs students.
Felipe Rivas paints the semi-circular stairs at the new Jones-Boshears Elementary School on West Front Street Wednes-day afternoon.
It's one of five schools TISD is building as part of the November 2008 bond program.
"This job's moving well," Monte Robinett, project manager for Tyler ISD's construction projects, said.
The project began in March and is expected to be finished in July. It will open in August for the start of the 2010-11 school year.
On the second floor of the Jones side, where the work is the farthest along, floor tiles are being laid, tiles are up on hallway walls and in bathrooms and the ceiling is in. Cabinets are installed in classrooms.
Permanent power and heat are on in the Jones portion and other areas of the school, which allows workers to complete the finishes inside, Robinett said. One of the last things to be completed will be the courtyard, he said.
The facility is being built as two separate schools with some areas that can be shared. The school's cafetorium will have a partition to separate the two populations of students or it can be moved at times when they want to combine the two groups of students for activities.
Jones has its own gym and the Boshears' students have an adaptive P.E. room as well as a therapeutic pool room, as they do in their current facility. Administrative offices at the front of the school will house both principals.
Tim Loper, director of facilities for TISD, said he feels good about the progress at Jones-Boshears.
"Despite some of the bad weather we've had and the rain, I don't see any problem whatsoever meeting our deadline," Loper said. "It's a large site, and we're fortunate to have some really good subcontractors and especially a dirt contractor who got the site ready to be able to start with the building components."
UNIQUE FEATURES
Ms. Lewis said the architects of the building really listened to her and her staff.
"Now I'm able to see the efforts of their labor and the thoughts that went into different spaces in the school," Ms. Lewis said.
Special features on the Jones side include a dome at the front of the school. Underneath the dome top are lights that mimic the layout of constellations.
Beneath the dome is an ornamental half-spiral staircase, and in the floor beneath it will be a compass rose cut into the tile.
Just past the dome are special classrooms upstairs and downstairs that are shaped differently because of the curve of the dome.
Upstairs, one of the classes will be for a telecommunications conference room, Ms. Lewis said.
"The object of the room is for our students to take virtual field trips and talk to classrooms in other parts of the United States," she said. "It's also going to be handicap accessible for the students from Boshears to be able to come over and do the same kinds of things."
A grant is being written for that room, Ms. Lewis said, noting the plans are still in the works.
Downstairs is a "Discovery Science Room," the principal said, where students can have hands-on experience with science. Jones Elementary is partners with Caldwell Zoo and Discovery Science Place, she said, and they plan to bring in mobile labs for students to have hands-on science activities in that room.
Across the hall downstairs in one of the special rooms is a math lab for hands-on learning activities.
"Our school is a math, science, technology magnet (school)," Ms. Lewis said. "Each of these three rooms will bring our magnet further along."
The fourth specially-shaped room upstairs is a regular science lab, she said.
"I think when our visitors walk in here, they will realize we are a Math-Science-Technology magnet school," she said.
BOSHEARS
Work on the Jones portion of the building began first, so it is further along than the Boshears side. The construction of the Boshears side will be to the point the Jones side is in about three months, officials said.
Karyn Hacker, principal of what will be known as "Boshears," said it's been fascinating watching the building go up.
Ms. Hacker was able to walk through the Boshears side several weeks ago and could tell where classrooms and bathrooms were going to be.
"It's just real exciting. It became more and more real," she said. "It's just going to be beautiful."
Everything on the Boshears side is specially designed with the students' needs in mind, officials said.
The doors and hallways are wider for wheelchairs. Inside classrooms, tracks will be installed to move some special needs' students using lift systems.
That portion of the school is also designed with changing rooms in between classrooms that include sinks and beds, something the existing school does not have. The tracks continue into those areas to help move the students.
The halls of the current school are packed full of equipment the students use, but the new facility is designed with that need in mind, Ms. Hacker said.
"They have designed it where there are little parking places for this equipment," she said. "You look down the hall and it looks empty and there are little insets by each of the classroom doors where you can park wheelchairs and things like that. Plus, there's some storage in between each two classrooms. I'm hoping when you look down those halls it will be relatively pristine looking and still have access to what we need to have access to."
There also will be opportunities for the students with disabilities to interact more easily with their non-disabled peers, Ms. Hacker said.
"We will have access to that on a daily basis," she said, noting, though, that it will be controlled.
With the help of a TISD Foundation grant, Jones fourth-graders are meeting with Boshears students on a regular basis to get to know about the special needs students, learn about wheelchairs and how they communicate, Ms. Hacker said.
That group of Jones students will be fifth-graders when the new school opens and will be "buddies" to the Boshears students, the principal said.
"I think it's going to be a great partnership," Ms. Hacker said. "We don't know how it's all going to work and what it's going to look like, but I'm excited to work with Ms. Lewis and her staff. They've been very open to us 'living together.' You blend families, and we're blending a school."
