A massive move
Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/News/63433/
ROGERS — When Karen Steen accepted the task of opening a new high school here, there wasn’t a manual for the job. When she’s finished there will be. And she’s already heard requests to borrow it.
Steen was hired by the Rogers School District in July 2007 to open the district’s second high school in August of this year. As a principalwithout-a-building, Steen has spent part of her time getting ready to open Heritage High School, but she’s also helped the district prepare for a grade- configuration change that will affect hundreds of students, teachers and administrators.
In June 2006, the Rogers School Board approved a plan for two fouryear high schools and four three-year middle schools. Beginning this fall, ninth graders will attend one of the two high schools. For one year only, every senior in the district will attend Rogers High School where they were juniors last year.
The district’s two junior highs (formerly grades eighth and ninth ) will become middle schools for grades sixth, seventh and eighth. The signs on the Elmwood and Oakdale buildings will be changed this summer.
Teachers received their new as- signments in late February. Approximately 200 teachers are moving to a new school this summer, not counting about 50 Kirksey teachers who are moving together to a new building, said Jane Webb, the assistant superintendent for personnel.
Moving eighth graders into the middle schools meant adding facilities for football and basketball at Kirksey and Lingle middle schools. A gymnasium addition was planned for Lingle, and the problem was solved at Kirksey with a decision to move the school up the street.
Two doors down from Kirksey, the building that was used as a sophomore campus for two years has a gym for basketball and space for a football practice field. That left the original Kirksey building empty, but the board was told there would be a need for more space for high-school classes. Next year, the old Kirksey building will be called “ the annex” and used for classes made up of students from both campuses. Some advanced classes that don’t draw enough students at one campus to be cost effective will move to the annex where they can be filled with students from both campuses. Also the district’s alternative school, Crossroads, and it’s Extended Day program will be located there.
For the past few years one school in the district, Tucker, located in Lowell, has had both an elementary and a middle school program. Next year, it will be all elementary.
Several administrators are involved in the vast relocation plan, Steen said recently. She started working on it in January.
In January, Steen met with business manager David Cauldwell, Buildings and Grounds director Barney Hayes and Facilities supervisor Jim White.
“ We brainstormed and then we put it on paper, ” Steen said. The plan was posted on the Internet so principals at each building could see it and keep their teachers up to date. Some of the steps seemed logical. For example, everyone agreed that the sophomore campus had to be moved out before Kirksey could be moved in, but that meant storing materials that would eventually end up at the new high school campus.
Steen met with teachers about their materials early on and asked for inventories including special needs.
Teachers have an average of 35 boxes each, Hayes estimated, including both personal items and text books. Some large text books can only be packed 10 to 12 to a box or else it becomes too heavy to move, he explained.
Assistant Superintendent Jim Johnson took over the job of sorting out textbooks. Principals at each of the secondary schools were asked for an inventory of text books and a determination of how many they’ll need for next year. The excess was to be boxed, collected and redistributed.
Moving books and all the other materials that teachers use on a daily basis means a lot of boxes — close to 10, 000 of them, Steen said. The library at the sophomore campus got book boxes early. Beginning in January, the boxes were placed on their side on the library shelves and books were placed in them so they were still assessable to students.
Cindy Ford, the district’s library director, was in charge of deciding which books from the sophomore campus would go to the Heritage library and which would go to Rogers High School for those 10-grade students. Some books that are needed for ninth grade course work had to be moved from the junior highs to the high schools. The middle school libraries were redistributed between the new middle schools. Other books were ordered to fill in the gaps.
Steen devised a scheme for labeling boxes that relied on colors. Pages of color-coded labels were printed at the district’s new print shop so moving crews could tell with a glance where a box was headed. Special labels were designed to indicate if contents need to be in a climate-controlled area.
This isn’t the first time the Rogers district has moved a school. In 2001, when the campus on Dixieland Road opened, juniors and seniors and their teachers moved. In 2006, the district’s sophomores and their teachers moved to the building on First Street. School services handled both those moves, Hayes said, but this one is much bigger.
Besides moving two complete faculties and all their materials, there are many sixth and seventh- grade teachers moving between the middle schools, and all the district’s ninth-grade teachers will move to one of the high schools. In addition, there are always a few elementary teachers moving between schools each summer, he said.
One building will be demolished this summer, so emptying it was priority, Steen said. The Southside building, located on the campus of Heritage, was home to Crossroads and Extended Day as well as the district’s Language Academy for students new to the English language.
Early in the spring everything at Southside was inventoried by the principal. Teachers tagged items they wanted moved to their new building and other principals in the district were invited to choose what they could use. Finally an auction company was hired to dispose of the rest. The building was empty by mid June.
Technology director Gary Day is in charge of moving all technology, and teachers were asked to consider what software they actually use. That gave the technology department a chance to clean house. In some cases the computers will remain where they are and the software will be changed, Steen said.
Three moving crews and a project manager were hired for the summer. Fifteen high school and college students make up the crews, Hayes said. When they’re not busy moving boxes, they help out with grounds work.
Not everything will be moved between buildings. Basic furniture like students desks and chairs will stay put and Heritage will get new furniture.
Often teachers have personal belongings in their room and Steen asked Heritage teachers to check with her about what they could bring to the new building.
“ A lot of people visit a new building and it has to look good, ” Steen said. “ We don’t want it to be piece meal. ” In some cases, teachers e-mailed her pictures of desk chairs and lecterns for approval.
Just in case, she asked Heritage teachers to take home a “ starter kit” made up of the things they would need on the first day of school, including a week or two of lesson plans. She expects everything will be in place that first day, but just in case “ I go with the Boy Scout motto of ‘ be prepared, ”’ she said.
The huge construction project that turned an old campus into the new Heritage High School is on schedule and Steen expects to move into her new office by the middle of this month. The classrooms should be ready by early August, and while teachers don’t return to work until August 11, a few may start setting up classrooms on their own time.
Every step of the way, Steen has been recording what she’s doing. After all, she explained, the district will be opening a third high school someday, and they’ll need a manual.