Teachers ready new high school for students

In less than a month, students will walk the freshly painted hallways, enjoy lunch while sharing new booths in the cafeteria and study in classrooms with abundant natural light in the new Whitefish High School.

The excitement is escalating as the final touches are placed on the new building. Teachers this week have their first opportunity to begin unpacking the boxes placed in their new rooms at the end of last school year.

“There’s a mixed feeling of anticipation and rush to get ready,” Principal Kerry Drown said. “We can’t wait to see the kids faces once they get into the new environment.”

There’s plenty of anticipation about what the first day of school on Sept. 2 will bring for students and staff, as well as in the coming weeks and months as everyone settles into the new $22.68 million building.

“Students and staff,” Drown said. “We’re all freshman together.”

The new two-level school centers around the cafeteria on the first floor and the library on the second floor with classroom wings spanning out from those focal points. Changes to the physical space supports the district’s goals to provide a relevant and rigorous education and a cultural shift in the school.

“We wanted to created a campus feeling,” Drown said. “We want this to feel more like a community college rather than a traditional high school.”

New walls and new furniture go hand-in-hand with educational changes. A new block schedule with 90-minute class periods will continue efforts to provide deeper instruction and opportunities for project-based learning. The wings of the school are interdisciplinary with not all English or science classrooms grouped together. Small gathering areas outside classrooms have been designed to create a space for student groups to come together to work on projects.

“We want to develop a higher level of responsibility and independence in our students to bridge the gap to university,” Drown said. “We want the climate to say community because we want the community to be part of our school. The strength of WHS is also our size, so we get to know the kids and families, and be a community.”

Up until this point, Drown said, the adults — teachers and administrators — have dominated the conversation about the school and he’s looking forward to students taking ownership of the new building.

The cafeteria space is at the center of the school on the first floor. Envisioned to be a gathering space rather than just a place to eat, the fold-up tables have been replaced by booths and tables with chairs. Drown said the space needs a name, a task he would like to see the student council spearhead to gather input.

Books wait on shelves in the library at the center of the second floor. Still the space remains empty waiting for students and staff to utilize the covered outdoor porch with views of Big Mountain.

“I’m excited about the library being the hub of the school,” Drown said. “I’m excited about the new science, chemistry and physics classrooms. I’m excited about the feeling people get when they walk into the classroom with all the natural light.”

The athletic training facilities completed in fall of 2013 were part of a $1 million donation from the Iron Horse Foundation. Adjacent to the remodeled gym facilities include a state-of-the-art weight room and fitness center. Drown points to the weight room as an example of the quality that has been carried through the project.

“That’s the kind of standard we want to set throughout the whole building,” he said. “We have a vision to make a school that is blue ribbon.”

Touches of the old school can be spotted throughout the new school.

Along one wall of the school cafe, salvaged bleachers from the old gym were installed as wainscoting. The wood remains much as it did when it was seating inside the gym with nicks, scratches and painted seating numbers. More of the wood will likely be used along a hallway outside the new gym. Down the hallways, old lockers were moved into the school and painted.

Inside the athletic facilities, new locker rooms house old lockers refurbished with new green and gold paint. Industrial arts students turned some of the bleacher wood into new locker room benches stamped with a green bulldog paw print.

“We quickly recognized we wanted to save the wood,” Drown said. “We worked with the architect for ways to blend the old with the new.”

Demolition of the old school continues on the north end of the campus where a new parking lot will be completed in about two months and landscaping is still expected for around the new building. Construction also continues inside the new Center for Applied Media, Arts & Sciences wing off of the gymnasium with completion expected for late fall.

Temporarily, the main entrance into the school and gymnasium access will be on the south side at the center of the new building. After the parking lot is complete main access to the school shifts to the west side of the building off of Pine Avenue.

“Our greatest challenge will be parking and helping people find their way into the new building,” Drown said. “We’ll be asking everyone to carpool or ride their bike.”

Parking will be pushed some distance from the school to around Memorial Park and also to the north side of the football field.

A traffic flow map will be made available on the high school website at whs.wsd44.org.