In NLR, 2 more schools opening
Pupils to step out of holiday break into new elementaries
For those keeping a tally, the North Little Rock School District has completed construction of three school buildings as part of its $265.5 million initiative to reduce 21 campuses to 13, most of which will be newly constructed or extensively renovated.
The sleek new Amboy and Lakewood elementary buildings will open to pupils and staff members Monday when classes resume after the week-long Thanksgiving break.
The new Meadow Park Elementary opened in August.
A fourth school, the new Boone Park Elementary, is just weeks from accepting pupils and staff members. That transition from the old to the new building is to be completed after the winter break.
On one l eve l , the 9,000-student North Little Rock District’s unprecedented capital improvement program — funded in part by a 7.4-mill property tax increase approved by voters in 2012 — is a plethora of architectural designs, bids, contracts, change orders, bank drafts and heavy equipment.
But ultimately each project comes down to students, moving into new spaces.
On the Friday before Thanksgiving break, some Amboy campus fifth-graders carried tubs of school supplies into their new building and saw for the first time the two-story tall, windowed, light-filled cafeteria and adjoining gymnasium — referred to as the Commons.
Eyes and mouths widened simultaneously as the children stepped in through the glass doors and entered the gleaming structure that smelled of fresh paint and new furniture. There were smiles, even giggles, as they absorbed all there was to see in the wide space that seemed larger than the entire campus of their old school. “Wow!” “This is awesome.” “I can’t believe this is our new school.” “This is like college.” The new 66,400-squarefoot Amboy, at 101 Auburn St., has been built and furnished at a cost of about $13.7 million. It’s a quick walk to the west from the old campus that fronts on 58th Street. Amboy now has about 400 pupils and nearly 60 staff members, but it will be able to expand to more than 500 pupils in the new building, Principal Shanda Coleman said.
“It’s beautiful and clean,” she told the visiting fifth-graders. “I’m counting on you to keep it spotless. Not many kids can say I was in the very first class to come to a brand new building. I need you all to take care of this building so that years and years from now, it will still be beautiful.”
The new Lakewood Elementary, built at the back door of the existing school at 1800 Fairway Ave., was designed to be just shy of 63,000 square feet. It cost $13.3 million.
Both buildings are the work of the architects from DLR Group of Overland Park, Kan., and Taggart Architects of North Little Rock. Baldwin & Shell Construction was the contractor.
Amboy, Lakewood, Meadow Park and Boone Park are nearly identical in design — rectangular stretches of
one and two stories. Neutral-brown bricks and gray metal architectural panels set off the bold colors of the window trim at each campus — orange at Amboy and yellow at Lakewood.
The building interiors also are similar. An entry vestibule, a waiting room/parent center for visitors to the school and a suite of offices mark the entrances. Wide “discovery” classroom hallways — painted in bold colors and equipped with sinks and counters, floor-to-ceiling windows that look onto grassy courtyards and easily movable furniture — will be the place for student collaboration and hands-on projects.
The classrooms are equipped with triangular-shaped-student desks, shelving and cabinets, multiple electrical outlets, and Internet-accessible televisions. Each has windows to the outdoors as well as to the hallways.
Amboy fifth-grade teacher Valencia Rochelle escorted her pupils to Room A202.
“I’m as excited as you guys are to be here,” she said. “We are getting a fresh start right now. I want you to give yourselves a fresh start. Someone cares enough about your education that they have invested this kind of capital in you. Think about that. I want you to care that much about yourself, as well.”
Andrew Chamblee, 10, said he likes the classrooms and the new desks and the natural light from the outside.
“It’s going to be a whole lot better,” he said. He has been an Amboy pupil since third grade. “It’s big and lovely. It’s just going to make my life a whole lot happier.”
The new Amboy and Lakewood schools feature separate spaces for music, art and physical education.
The fullsize music classroom in each of the new schools is built onto the Commons area stage, but it can be partitioned off from the cafeteria and the gymnasium sections of the Commons.
“I traveled from classroom to classroom at Amboy, so this is much better,” said music teacher Amy White, who splits her time between Amboy and Seventh Street elementaries. “I’m pretty excited.”
Asked if her lesson plans will change as a result of the new space at Amboy, White said they will evolve.
“It’s opening the possibilities,” she said. “I have plans that I’ve done at Seventh Street because I had space and I had things. What will limit me here is not having things like drums and xylophones. It will take time and money to build up that supply. But the space opens up possibilities. We’ll be able to do movement activities, which I haven’t been able to do.”
The spacious art room at the center of each campus features angled walls, windows that let in natural light and a wall for art displays. Across the main or central hallway from the art room in each new building is the carpeted media center and an adjoining computer laboratory.
Lakewood Principal Sara Logan said her school’s art teacher has never had her own classroom.
“Talk about someone who is happy — try to push that art-on-a-cart to the portable buildings when it’s raining,” Logan said but added, “She’s never complained.”
The now-vacated Lakewood Elementary was built in 1953, making it more than 60 years old. The faculty and pupils — led by second-graders — paid tribute recently to the alumni, hosting some 200 former students at the campus one last time and recording interviews of former students from each decade of the school’s history.
But Logan said the building became too small for its 430 pupils. The school has relied on seven portable buildings to provide an adequate number of classrooms and on the church next door for activity and assembly space. In recent weeks, some of the lights in the school and the intercom have shut down — as if the building that is going to be demolished knows that its time is coming to a close, Logan said.
It will take some patience to adjust to the new school and its features, Logan said. There won’t be a playground for about three months, for example.
“There are a lot of whatifs,” she said. “It’s the newness of it all. We don’t know what we are walking into. I told teachers today that ‘you want that smart TV and that laptop to work on Monday, but I can’t promise that it is going to work. You might need to have a Plan B in your classroom.’”
The new building and a new era offer great potential, Logan said.
“We can take our kids and teach them even more,” she said. “We thought we were doing a good job. But now we have technology and space. Going into a building like this, we know we can start being innovative. We can take them to a new height of learning.”