Junior high starts metamorphosis to a middle school

A move to "let out the seams" on District 5 schools continues this week with groundbreaking on the first phase of expansion and remodeling at Kalispell Junior High.

When a team of shiny-shovel wielders slices into the dirt at 11:45 a.m. public ceremony Wednesday, it will set the stage for the real earth movers to start making a bigger mess of things just after Labor Day.

That's when construction begins on a new 9,400-square-foot gym and lobby that will attach to the west side of the current circular gym.

It's Phase 1 of the $10.9-million project, approved by voters in November.

Ultimately, District 5 trustees aim to convert the grades-eight-and-nine junior high into a grades-six-through-eight middle school that incorporates team teaching conducive to adolescent learning and allows freshmen to join their peers at the high school.

"Since 1969, this has been a temporary fix, having the ninth-graders here," junior high Principal Barry Grace said. With growing student enrollment, they were squeezed out of Flathead High.

"It has always been in the plan to add onto the high school or build a new high school." With freshmen in the junior high building, it's been hard for them to participate in the high school culture. "That's a shame," he added.

The expansion also will relieve some of the population pressure at Kalispell's five elementary schools.

Multiple transitions in a few short years - from elementary schools to Linderman School to the junior high to the high school - also are hard during tumultuous adolescent years.

Along with the new gym at the junior high, Phase 1 includes some remodeling for the current gym. It should take about six months, putting the completion date for that portion at about March 2006.

Phase 2, a 24,000-square-foot wing of classrooms northeast of the library, begins in October with footings and foundation. Walls should start going up in the spring, with completion sometime in February 2007.

Phase 3 wraps up the project, when the cafetorium (a combined lunch and auditorium area) and commons become the building's centerpiece at the front entry to the southwest. Construction starts in May and will be finished by July 2007.

Students and staff will use the new school in fall 2007.

The construction budget is a little more than $9.3 million. That leaves about $700,000 for architect and engineer fees, $122,000 for land costs, $558,150 for equipment and furnishings, and $211,000 for miscellaneous expenses.

Bids for the gym construction were opened Thursday. Bid packages for the classroom addition are due the third week of September.

Don Counsell of Architects Northwest, project engineer for the middle school redesign, is partnering with school officials and Swank Enterprises construction management team of Bob Meinhardt, project manager, and Mark Harwood, project superintendent.

Those familiar with the new Columbia Falls Junior High, an earlier Architects Northwest project, will recognize some of the design elements.

Here's how Counsell outlined what each phase includes:

-Gymnasium

The hardwood-floor basketball court can be divided with a curtain into half courts. It also will be striped for volleyball games.

It will be used for physical education classes and team practices, not competition, and will replace the Linderman gym. Although not in the budget, bleachers could be added to seat about 100 people.

The present gym, with 550 seating capacity, will continue to host competitions. A foyer will be a bridge between the two gyms.

Brick veneer and stucco will match the exterior at ground level. Above that, a translucent material will admit diffused light.

Locker rooms will be shared between the gyms. The school's existing kitchen will be converted to a girls' locker room later in the remodel, bringing the total to two boys' and two girls' locker rooms. They'll all be freshened up with new toilets, paint, lockers and lighting.

Eventually, the balcony behind the bleachers that encircle the current gym will convert from a lunch area to gymnastics and storage space.

On the bottom level, band and chorus rooms will become health classrooms when music relocates to the cafetorium/commons addition.

After the gym is finished - save for its hardwood floor - it will temporarily house the library and administrative offices during remodeling. Thus, it won't be usable as a gym until after the final phase is completed and the gym flooring is installed.

-Classroom wing

The 12 new classrooms, grouped in pods of four with each linked with a bank of lockers and a "porch" area for common projects, probably will be used for sixth-graders.

Plans call for a television in each class and several locations for computer monitors. Cabinetry will include a sink in each room.

One of the pods will wall off the north end of the open lawn, creating a courtyard that can be used as an outdoor working classroom.

Two new computer labs will be built along the library's north wall; across the hall will be a special-education room, with restrooms in between.

The library remodeling will rearrange space so the checkout desk is in the center of the room, and three corners can be used for class work space. The fourth will house computers.

The west wall will be opened up with windows and a door into the courtyard. The conference room and glassed-in office will be eliminated, and a work room added in the corner nearest the elevator.

-Cafetorium/commons

Counsell and his team designed an attractive sloped-roof entry for the commons and lunch/auditorium area without blocking daylight windows in the main-floor classrooms above.

The new floor will be about 9 1/2 feet below the main level, stretching along the front wall from the stairwell on the west to the administrative area on the east.

An elevator and two stairways will lead to the upper level, where windows from the redesigned administrative suite will overlook the commons. The suite will be gutted and rebuilt, eliminating the maze of tiny offices, bringing the nursing area to a more accessible point and giving counseling more space and a private entry.

The lobby runs east-west, with outside entries under covered breezeways from public parking to the west and the bus loop to the east.

Along the north is the music suite with choir, orchestra and band rooms, and individual practice, office and storage rooms.

South of the lobby is the commons, with three wide tiers for lunch tables that can be moved for performances. A multi-purpose stage is at the west end of the tiered floor, and a roll-down door can shut out noise from the lobby.

A bank of windows opens onto a small courtyard, where students can continue eating lunch outside. Again, windows at ceiling height will spill daylight into the commons.

-Traffic

The small parking area in front of the administrative offices will be eliminated. A bus loop will curve off the main entry road from Three Mile Drive to the south, and feed back onto that entry road.

West of the bus loop, traffic will be one-way toward Northern Lights Boulevard on the west and cars will drop off students in front of the school. They can enter the parking lot from its on-site access drive to the north or by driving out onto Northern Lights and re-entering from the west.

At the top of the slope north of the building, another access road is proposed between the public street and the existing driveway and cul-de-sac.

Overall, Grace sees the plan as full of positives.

"Finally we'll have a decent space for the kids to eat," he said, that is "warm and inviting."

There will be a locker for every student, instead of two students sharing one locker.

Music and drama students will have practice and performance space in their own school, he continued, without having to use Flathead High.

With more gym space, all students interested in athletics can take a shot at them.

Nursing and counseling areas will offer better safety and privacy.

Well-designed learning space, and more of it, will boost lessons and relieve elementary pressures.

And, he added, the ability to team-teach - a model the staff will venture into with one team this fall - will open a world of benefits to the entire school.

"We're excited," Grace said of the upcoming construction. "It's going to be somewhat of a mess, but it will be well worth it."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.