By Brett Milam
Editor
Batavia Local Schools held a community-wide visioning meeting on Dec. 4 to garner community feedback about upcoming construction.
Elevar Design Group was on hand to present to community members what they were looking for regarding feedback. Elevar is the same group that designed the three new buildings in West Clermont Local Schools: the high school, Summerside Elementary, and Willowville Elementary.
Greg Otis, senior vice president of strategic planning at Elevar, said the way to think about the project is, “Does it fit, and what’s possible?”
The design is about looking at the next generations to come, as well as maximizing the “bang for the buck” operationally, Otis said.
“This is the opportunity to think about as consumers how that investment today is going to last and be ready for the next couple of generations of students that are coming to the building,” he said.
In November 2018, voters approved a 7-mill levy. The project would build a new high school and middle school, and the existing Batavia High School would be converted into a community center. Athletic facility improvements, such as turf fields, and an addition to the elementary school are also on tap.
The district is getting $38 million in state funding, with a local cost of $23.5 million. In addition, the local improvements such as the repurposing of the high school and the athletic facility improvements are the total responsibility of the District and will cost $10,093,942.14
The total cost of the project is $61,457,868.
In repurposing the current high school, the district looks to include:
– Space for the Board of Education offices.
– A dedicated K-12 wrestling facility.
– Community meeting space in current classrooms.
– Community event space in the current cafeteria.
– Space for a campus-based health clinic (think Little Clinic in Kroger).
– Flexibility to bring classroom space back online based on enrollment needs.
At four corners in the cafeteria, poster paper were displayed with the questions: 1.) What do you like best about Batavia?; 2.) Hopes for or needs to be met by the project?; 3.) Greatest opportunity for improvement; and 4.) How would you like to receive future communication about the project?
Some of the feedback about the first question included the ability for kids to accelerate learning to their interests, the variety of activities (sports, book clubs, band, choir, etc.), that the teachers care about the students, and the sense of community.
On the second question, residents said 21st-century learning spaces to accommodate all students, and more preschool class space, with expanded preschool services.
For the third question, residents responded with items, such as “greater transparency,” an opportunity to share staff/students across all three buildings, and the continued theme of more versatile and expanded spaces, along with smaller class sizes.
The district’s website, a newsletter and an email notification were all the options for how residents wanted to stay in communication about the project.
One of the things John Bennington honed in on is the need for a performing arts space. Bennington has two children in the district, a son in fourth grade and a daughter in sixth grade.
“When we look at other districts and how they look at performing arts, there are legitimate theaters at some of these. And while Batavia does an excellent job on the education front, I think we could grow in our performing arts area, and give the kids another facet to grow in themselves,” he said.
Bennington said he thinks that would entail a multi-use area.
“No doubt about it, everything is going so fast toward the technology side of things, and it’s a great creative outlet, but there’s nothing in my mind like live theater; the human interaction, seeing people bring works to life,” he said. “And for the kids to be able to take a hand in that and put their own spin on a play, or to write something themselves that they could then see performed, I think it’s fantastic.”
It’s just a different way to learn, Bennington added.
Lisa Cameron-Gulley, a senior designer with Elevar, who does educational planning and programming, said the biggest thing is flexibility and the “elbow room” necessary to facilitate creativity in the classroom via architectural choices.
She’s the kind of designer who recommends reading, “Most Likely to Success: Preparing our kids for the innovation era,” to understand a re-imagining for education in the 21st century.
Cameron-Gulley said the education model is shifting from a facts-based model — the same model created in the late 1800s, tailored more for producing factory workers — to soft skills-based, such as creativity, communication, and collaboration.
“So thinking about making projected-based learning available, and how the process of this project-based learning is really the important part, if not really the product, it’s what their learning while they’re doing,” she said. “Not that direct instruction is going away, but that the kind of physical confinements of it may be a little more flexible.”
Flexibility entails more teacher-to-teacher collaboration, large groups, small groups, intervention spaces, and so on, Cameron-Gulley said.
One of those key flexibility items discussed on day one, she said, was the ability to transform a room quickly, and to be able to support a lot of different learning styles in the same space. That means furniture on wheels, operable partitions, different types of seating and gathering spaces, and so on.
Cameron-Gulley also said part of the visioning process is to work with the district on where the curriculum is going. A saying among architects is the embarrassment of “creating an elegant solution to the wrong problem,” and that’s something Cameron-Gulley said they’re trying to avoid doing.
All of which is geared toward reaching kids where they are.
Cameron-Gulley said the idea behind flexibility is that “we don’t always know what we’re training kids to do yet” because the jobs may not even exist, but if the kids have those soft skills, then they’ll be prepared for anything.
“Those kinds of skills are going to translate well into the workforce,” she said.
Another balancing act is between making sure the schools are safe and secure without looking like the common stereotype of a prison.
“You want it to be open and welcoming and feel a certain way to people who are in the building,” she said.
One way to help with that is sunshine: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a green building certification system, mandates a certain amount of daylight within the building, and that helps to open it up.
Other “soft strategies” include creating a pod-style building with double-height space instead of a long corridor with classrooms on either side. It’s more inward-facing, Cameron-Gulley said.
She said they want to prioritize what’s important to the community, and that will provide guidelines to help Elevar move forward.
“We want people to feel like they own the project. We want to hear what’s important to people because it makes a big difference,” Cameron-Gulley said.
Another visioning event was held on Dec. 11.