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The $62 million building project for Warren Local School District inched along after a meeting presenting the findings of visioning committees. It appears at least that the district's new elementary building will have clusters of classrooms grouped around common areas rather than the historic hallway-and-room structure.
The district is working toward rebuilding every school in the district except one -- Warren Middle School -- on a single campus, using a combination of local money from a levy approved in May and state contributions, in total about $62 million.
The district has engaged its architect, construction manager and engineering certification firm. A series of meetings that included representatives of the board, administration, teaching staff, parents, businesses and the community at large examined what they thought would be desirable attributes of the new buildings. The report that came out of those sessions was the subject of the latest meeting, held Jan. 23 and attended by about 40 people.
"It was very information, gave good guidance to the architects," said Debbie West, president of the Warren board of education. "There were a lot of surveys about what was important to the groups and teams. Flexibility is the key, to enable us to change as we grow."
The visioning process will continue, she said, although the architects now have more defined information to work with.
"The design team is starting to put together some of the things they need to start drawing it out, like the number of classrooms, where they should be in relation to each other," she said. "We'll flesh it out as we go along."
Ashley Skinner, 36, is a programs teacher at Little Hocking Elementary School and has a 6-year-old in Warren schools and a 4-year-old getting ready to start in the fall. She's also a Warren alumnus.
She was at the meeting last week.
"It gave us a broad understanding of what the important things are as we move into this new foundation for Warren Local Schools," she said. "Harrison (Planning, the visioning consultants) took everybody's thoughts and ideas, and the meeting was a collection of everything."
Skinner said a significant part of the planning is looking ahead to the future needs of Warren students.
"Kindergarten students will eventually become adults who are doing jobs that haven't even been invented or thought of now," she said. "What can we do to prepare kids for that? You think you're building a perfect school, but what will things be like 20 years from now?"
The 124-page report developed by Harrison and offered at the meeting last week included survey information gathered from previous sessions.
The top characteristic shown in both the educational and curriculum delivery surveys was flexibility, well ahead of any other. For facilities, "safe" and "community" appeared most often after that, and "efficient," "modern," "comfortable" and "secure" also were high on the list.
Descriptions of desirable curriculum delivery plans that appeared most frequently included the terms "student centered," "individualized," "diverse," and "real world."
All the charts created by participants in the previous workshops included elementary classrooms grouped around a common area rather than traditional hallways and doors.
The project is still in the conceptual stages, but the community and schools are having the opportunity to look at what they like, in part from a dozen existing school designs assembled by Harrison for consideration.
"I liked the 'pods' idea for elementary schools," Skinner said, because it creates a more collaborative atmosphere for teachers and for students. "It's like a family group, you don't have traditional hallways, instead there's a middle meeting area with classrooms branching off. It's not just a class of 20 kids, for the teachers you feel like they're all your kids."
Mark Daughety, a teacher at Warren Elementary, said he also liked the non-traditional layout.
"Being able to have spaces rather than rows of chairs, is more engaging for students, different than a normal hallway with doors," he said. "I'm hoping what we see is a community kind of thing where teachers work together to do what's best for the kids."
Daughety, who has been teaching in the Warren district for 30 years, said the visioning process has been rewarding.
"I thought the meetings went really well. Everyone got to have their ideas heard, and there were a lot of good ideas. You can see all these possibilities," he said.
Daughety said his children, now through college, all went to Warren schools. "I would do that again, certainly," he said.
The building project is still in early stages, and the visioning process at this point is about deciding functionality, not picking design or appearance features.
"This is not about designing buildings," West said. "It's more about how, academically, we would be using the buildings."
At a glance
Warren Local Schools building project:
¯ Has a budget of about $62 million, following a levy vote in favor of the project in May 2017.
¯ District is still in the visioning stage.
¯ Project information is available on the Warren Local Schools website: warrenlocal.org, click on the "building project" tab.