A New Look for GJ School Building

CONVERSION TO K-6 FACILITY BEGINS IN MAY

It’s a complete makeover for the interior of the Grand Junction school building.

The venerable building, which has been educating students since the oldest part of the building opened in late 1914, will be refurbished from top to bottom this summer.

As soon as the 2011-12 school year ends in May, workers from Estes Construction will go to work transforming what has primarily been East Greene High School since 1960 into the newly repurposed East Greene Elementary School, serving students from the East Greene district in grades pre-kindergarten through fourth grade, and the Greene County Intermediate School, serving all fifth and sixth grade students in the East Greene and Jefferson-Scranton districts.

The overhaul is part of the two-way, whole grade sharing agreement that goes into effect at the start of school next August. In turn for Jefferson-Scranton sending fifth and sixth graders to East Greene, all 7^th through 12^th grade students in East Greene will attend classes in Jefferson-Scranton’s facilities in Jefferson. Those buildings are being rechristened Greene County High School and Greene County Middle School.

Like the EG elementary school in Grand Junction, the Jefferson-Scranton district will maintain its own PK-4 elementary school building in Jefferson for Jefferson-Scranton students in those grade levels.

As part of the transition, the Rippey building will be phased out as an elementary school with the gym to remain in use for East Greene High School boys’ athletics for 2012-13. JS and EG officials have indicated the gym night host possible Greene County middle school sports next year too. EG and JS will begin sharing all girls high school and middle schools sports this summer. Boys middle school athletics start sharing in the fall with football. High school boys won’t begin sharing sports until the start of the following school year, 2013-14.

The remodeling plans were reviewed firsthand at the joint meeting of the East Greene and Jefferson-Scranton school boards on Wednesday, March 28, at the ICN Room in the Grand Junction building.

Mike Harter, East Greene superintendent, and Jon Hueser, East Greene middle and high school principal, took the board members through the school to show where each level of instruction will be conducted and how the various parts of the building will be transformed.

The top two floors of the original part of the 1914 building will become the new Greene County Intermediate School. The lower part, or “ground floor,” of that wing will be remodeled into new classrooms for first, second, third and fourth grades. Two of the three existing classrooms in the 1954 wing will become the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten rooms, which was their original purpose when that addition was designed and built nearly 60 years ago.

When the Grand Junction building became the high school for East Greene in 1959-60, the newer wing continued to be used for kindergarten and first grades for about 10 years. Eventually the entire building was dedicated to high school instruction, and the kindergarten and first grade classrooms were relocated to Rippey.

THE ‘NEW LOOK’ GJ BUILDING

Starting from the entrance of the single-level north wing (1954) to the top of the oldest three-level wing (1914), these are the changes to building:

The present vocal music room—the first of the three classrooms when entering the building—will become the new main administrative office area. The current door from the classroom to the hall will lead into an outer office area with three smaller offices behind that for school administrators.

A main entrance into the office area will be cut into the exterior wall in the area between the first set of outside triple doors and the second. This is roughly opposite the built-in glass trophy case, which was part of the original triple door entryway, which was designed with a contemporary glass and wood format in accord with the rest of the addition. However, school building codes later required the district to install bulky-looking fireproof metal doors to the outer three doors.

This new configuration from entryway to main office will direct all visitors directly into the office and add an extra measure of security to the facility. The second (inside) bank of doors will remain locked prohibiting outside access, but will have exit “push bars” allowing for students of all ages to open the doors to leave the building. (Currently, the main entrance to the school is on ground level of the older part of the building, which leads up a wide entry and stairway to the office area on the middle level of the building’s three levels.)

The band room which is on the far north side of the north wing—directly at the end of the wide lobby area when first entering the building—will remain a band room for the fifth and sixth grades. Part of that room—along its south connecting wall to the 1939 gymnasium addition—will be reapportioned as handicapped accessible ramp leading down and into the ground level hallway alongside the current ICN room, boys locker room and north side entry to the stage in the gymnasium-auditorium. The width of that ramp is roughly the size of the current double doors into the band room. A new double-door entry similar to the existing doorway will be made out of the third of three practice rooms along the west wall of the band room. The restrooms off the lobby of the north wing will also be remodeled.

On the south side of the gymnasium, the present family and consumer science (formerly home economics) classroom will become the new media center for both the intermediate and elementary areas. The cafeteria-lunchroom in the basement level of the north wing will be relocated to the current art room on the far east side of the 1939-1954 part of the building. Its main entry will be off the long hallway that leads from the southeast corner of the gym floor up to the stage (south side) and to the family and consumer science classroom, and continues east and then south to an outside entryway, and then turns east again directly to the art room.

A new handicap accessible ramp will be built at the south entryway, which is currently accessible by steps.

The wall between the art room and the ICN room—created in renovation a few years back—will come down and the reopened space will be feature the cafeteria seating area to the north and the kitchen to the south.

This part of the building is known to several generations of GJ-EG grads as the “industrial arts room,” as it was built as part of the 1954 expansion project by a local company, Neel Lumber Co. The classroom wing on the other side of the gym was designed by a Des Moines architectural firm and built by contractor that specialized in school construction projects.

RENOVATING ‘OLD MAIN’

Plans for the top floor of the original 1914 building, or “Old Main,” call for two science rooms. The former science room on the south side is currently a middle school social studies room, but will revert back to science. A classroom on the northeast corner of the top floor has traditionally been the high school chemistry and physics room, and it will continue as a science room. Part of that room may be blocked out for a proposed elevator that will connect to the lower two floors.

(School officials are still balancing the cost versus need of an elevator linking all three floors. It would stop at the top, middle and bottom floors of Old Main but be accessible from the ground-level 1939 addition, which has a ground level double-door entrance facing the east, where the gymnasium wing connects to the north staircase down to the lower floor and up to the middle floor of Old Main.)

Just to the south of that science classroom is the largest space of the top floor. It is currently the media center. In the 1970s it was a library and student lounge and then later became an expanded library/media room, but since the building first opened and well into the 1960s it was the high school study hall and assembly room. Part of that space just off the hallway will be dedicated as a pass-through resource area while the rest of the space toward the east wall will be divided into two classrooms.

Across the hall from the former study hall area was the longtime principal’s office which was moved to the former superintendent’s office on the second floor several years ago. (The superintendent’s office was relocated to the south end classroom of the middle floor.) This space will be again used as offices.

On either side of the office are existing classrooms and the boys and girls restrooms. At the north end of the hallway are two smaller rooms that will be used as resource rooms.

The middle floor will see the current superintendent’s office revert to classroom space devoted to family and consumer science for intermediate students. Part of the current principal’s office closest to the hallway will become a smaller resource area with computer terminals while the rest of the space will become a classroom, flanked on either side by existing classrooms. The clasroom to the south is currently a media lab with computer terminals. That room will be converted to a resource room with laptops.

There are two classrooms on the west side of the hallway divided by the large, open staircase that leads up to the middle floor from the ground level. Another classroom is at the north end of the hallway.

The bottom level will see significant changes. The east side of this floor was at one time used for auto shop and vocational agricultural but in recent years has been subdivided into two separate spaces—custodian’s office/storage area on one side and the weight room for high school athletics on the other. Originally, when the building opened in 1914, this was the gymnasium-- the first in this part of the state. In fact, the restrooms on this level were actually the boys and girls locker rooms for the gym. These were used for visiting teams’ locker rooms from the time the gymnasium wing opened in 1939 until it was phased out for high school basketball 40 years later and the Rippey gym became the East Greene home court.

This “first” gym had a rather short life as basketball and other school events move to the Legion Hall when it opened in 1922. The Legion Hall had room for a basketball court and seating on the upper level and a kitchen and dining hall that could handle large crowds on the lower level. The first county high school basketball tournaments were held in the Legion Hall along with town team tournaments, including a state Legion tournament in 1925 won by the Grand Junction town team.

Presently, the middle portion of the old gym area has a garage door and connecting sloped driveway at the rear of the building, remnants from its automotive mechanics era. The door will be replaced with a wall and the entire space will get a new raised floor and be divided into three lower elementary classrooms. A fourth lower grade classroom will be opposite the hallway on the northwest side of the building. This is currently the guidance and career counseling office. Further north of that is the boiler room. At the opposite, or south end, of this lower floor will be boys and girls restrooms on the west side and the classroom on the south end becomes an art room. When completed this floor will have five full-size classrooms and two small resource rooms located between the middle classroom on the east side and the main hallway.

Next to the west side classroom will be a space for the school nurse. Just to the south of that is a storage area (the space under the front entryway staircase that leads up to the second floor) and adjacent to that to the south will be an office for visiting AEA staff. Across the hallway and next to the new classroom being crafted out of the weight room will be smaller resource room for Title I reading.

The architects have marked off space for an elevator shaft from the lower to the middle to the upper floor in the northwest corner area of the classrooms on the northeast side of the building. A small elevator foyer would be created about the same size of the Title I room, allowing access to and from the elevator and out into the hallway.

MEETING HANDICAP ACCESS  MANDATE

The genesis for the remodeling project is a mandate from federal Office of Civil Rights Equity to make the building accessible to the handicapped. When the Iowa Department of Education made its accreditation visit to the two East Greene school buildings in 2011, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) conducted a tandem site inspection visit. OCR then indicated to East Greene officials that the two school buildings in Grand Junction and Rippey would need to come into compliance for handicapped access. Each building’s media center, office and lunchroom would all need to be either be on one level and an elevator system would be necessary to get students to any upper or lower floors.

As the whole grade sharing process was being worked out, it became apparent to East Greene school officials that the cost to upgrade two buildings for 275 total students was not feasible. Further, enrollment data indicates that a large majority of East Greene students live in Grand Junction, as the proportional number of students in Rippey, Dana and the surrounding rural areas has dropped considerably in the last 15 to 20 years. Presently, just 7 of the East Greene elementary students (90 total in K-5) live in Rippey.

A consultant hired by both districts to advise them on whole grade sharing recommended last summer that the Rippey building be phased out.