In cold weather, the foyer outside the Shorewood High School lunch room is chock-a-block with students sitting on the floor eating their lunch. They’ve overflowed from the small lunchroom next door, which was never built to host almost 1,800 students.
“It was not designed for this,” said principal Bill Dunbar, standing in the foyer on Friday, Jan. 25.
Outgrown spaces are just one reason district officials want to build a new Shorewood High School and significantly renovate Shorewood High School. (See related story.)
“Both facilities have reached life expectancy,” Dunbar said.
Pat Hegarty cited Shorecrest’s bathrooms, which have raised complaints from the school’s ASB, as an example.
“The bathrooms haven’t changed much since (1960),” he said. “The tiles, the ventilation, the plumbing.”
Some parts of the building are no longer functioning, he said. Shorecrest was built in 1960, according to district records.
Shorewood is comprised of an old elementary school and a middle school that were joined together. The middle school was built in 1953 and the elementary school before that.
“There is no date as to when it was constructed, but we know it was in the first half of the 20th century,” said Marcia Harris, deputy superintendent.
Since then, both high schools have had improvements made and additions added. But there reaches a point where retrofitting is no longer adequate, Dunbar said.
For example, last winter several classrooms in Shorewood’s 100 building, including special education classrooms, were moved for a few months because of leaks and water on the roof due to a malfunctioning drainage system.
One special education class moved to Highland Terrace Elementary for four months while the system was repaired.
The 100 building — the former elementary school — is the oldest part of the school.
“We’re continually repairing the roof and adjusting the drainage system to prevent and deal with leaks that have occurred,” Dunbar said of the 100 building. “They’ve done a lot of patching.”
Leaks aren’t a significant issue at Shorecrest, Hegarty said. But heating is.
“Heat and containing heat is an issue in a building as large as ours,” he said. “It’s not on its last legs but it’s getting there.”
Heating is a challenge at Shorewood too. Dunbar pointed out windows in a classroom in the 100 building. They are like many older windows in the school that are bad at keeping in heat, he said.
In the last year, both principals, along with several staff, parents and students, have created a list of goals for the new schools called “educational specifications.”
While the specifications for each school are separate, many of the goals are the same.
Aside from obvious improvements like more environmentally responsible heating and less leaks, the group outlined other improvements they want to see.
Security is one. Currently, both schools have several points of access from the outside and there are poor sight lines across campus. As a result, security depends on personnel walking around, the principals said. From the street, you can’t tell if someone is on campus, which is a challenge for police patrols, Dunbar said.
The goal is to tighten up security in the new buildings by creating a more open campus in terms of sight lines, reducing points of outside access and maybe adding security cameras.
Another goal is to have more common spaces for students and staff. While the current schools have common spaces, they are not ideal, the principals said. At Shorecrest, there is no large, quality space for staff to work together, Hegarty said.
The new schools also aim to have more natural light.
That’s a big one for Shorewood teacher Rich Stuart, whose classroom makes do with two narrow windows. Large windows would be ideal, he said.
“They can see this world out there they will be a part of,” he said. “If they’re in a box…”
There is research on the drawbacks of fluorescent lights on adolescent learning, and that’s why some teachers bring their own lamps, Dunbar said.
At Shorewood, the 100 building, being the former elementary school, gets more natural light than some other buildings.
Another goal is classrooms better set up for modern teaching. Currently the classrooms at the two high schools are designed to have rows of desks lined up with the teacher at front. Teaching has changed to involve more group work and more class discussions, so teachers have had to work with what they have in rearranging their rooms, Dunbar said.
The educational specifications also call for each school to have an infrastructure that allows for more new technology.
With the new technology that has come into Shorewood in recent years, for example, the school has had to do some retrofitting, like columns down the center of rooms.
Parents and teachers have expressed excitement about planning for new buildings.
“They’re excited to be part of the process,” Dunbar said.
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