In three years, Haven’s science rooms as we know them will no longer exist.
At a March 5 community forum, architects from Kelly Clough Baker and Associates (KCBA) presented their preliminary plans for renovations to the school. The highlight of the forum was KCBA’s plans to completely remake both the academic wing and the Providence Road entrance to the high school.
The proposed plan would completely change the school by removing the science classrooms in the second, third, and fourth floor hallways and replacing them with a new “Learning Commons” filled with furniture for students and small group instruction spaces.
The “Learning Commons” would still include classrooms in the middle of the academic hallways, but the classrooms would be smaller and not used for science classes.
To compensate, KCBA proposes to create a brand new science wing located by the Providence Road entrance, with plans to expand the school all the way up to the current drop-off area. The new science wing would be two stories tall, creating another area of the fourth floor in a completely different area of the school.
Additionally, the plan would completely rebuild the front office to be closer to the road and shorten the drop-off driveway in the front of the school.
According to architects, the plan requires the closure of the Providence Road entrance for a year.
“We’re not going to be able to drop people off up there, and that’s where the main office is currently,” architect Mike Kelly said. “We’re going to flip the front door for a year-plus while that [construction to the front entrance] occurs.”
The proposed plan is still set to remove the trailers, which will be replaced with a new auxiliary gym to increase capacity for sports that use the gym and physical education classes. Classes in the trailers will move to the smaller classrooms in the new “Learning Commons” left vacant by science classes.
The plan is also set to replace and improve the bathrooms and expand current life skills classrooms into the academic wing. Architects also plan to implement countless “Warm Safe and Dry” improvements, promising major changes to most of the building systems like HVAC and plumbing systems.
District leaders first discussed renovations over two years ago and the discussion has continued since, with plans discussed at the beginning of the year and even last month’s community renovations forum. But the idea to add a new science wing along with the new “Learning Commons” was never mentioned until the March 5 forum.
In discussions around improvements ranging from a new pool to a new turf field, the new plan of “Learning Commons” and new science labs appear to be major elements of the plan.
Architects justified the change by pointing to the limited lab and storage space in current science classrooms, an issue the district seeks to remedy.
“[The science classrooms are] also really long and skinny. They’re undersized. There’s no storage, which means those small rooms feel even smaller because there’s stuff everywhere,” Kelly said. “That’s a space that’s just too small.”
Architects also cited community feedback in favor of more common spaces for students as a reason for the insertion of the “Learning Commons” in academic hallways. According to Kelly, the repetition of the space on each floor will improve the environment in the academic hallways.
“You do it once, you do it three times, and now we have just a completely different feel to those classrooms, to that wing,” Kelly said.
The forum also served as a way for the architects and administration to get community feedback on the ideas, similarly to the forum held last month. Prior to the presentation, community members participated in a tour of the building led by juniors Noah White and Josh Lund.
White believes that the tour helped community members to be able to provide better feedback. The tour took community members to a variety of different locations throughout the high school, ranging from the pool and locker rooms to the science classrooms that the architects would later announce were to be removed.
“Now they get to see what the high school has and what it needs to take that next step to being an even better school,” White said.
The pool, originally earmarked as one of the biggest potential changes, is now set only for small improvements to make the space more livable. According to architects, it is possible that the renovations will result in changes to locker rooms as part of the proposed athletic improvements that include the auxiliary gym.
Lund agrees with the plan to remove the trailers and improve the locker rooms, seeing those areas of the school as requiring the most improvement.
“Replacing those and getting them into a place where the floor is actual floor and not some plastic over the ground [along with] incorporating those classrooms back into the building would be huge,” Lund said. “I think the pool also with the locker rooms is probably the most disgusting part of the school.”
Architects also intend for the proposed “Learning Commons” in the academic hallways to give students additional spots to eat. The new space would come as the administration aims to narrow down from three lunches to two in pursuit of a flexible block of time similar to fifth block in the middle of the day. Architects posited the idea of a cafe in the new spaces to provide additional places for students to eat.
“One of the challenges is right now, [the cafeteria] is the only place in the building for food and that the students are allowed to go,” Kelly said. “It’s going to take a little bit of change and understanding, not only from the students but the teachers, to create some of those spaces where kids can spread out a bit.”
Currently, students can eat lunch in the Wall of Honor hallway and in the library, but the capacity of these spaces is much lower than that of the cafeteria. Architects suggested the installation of tents outside the cafeteria during the fall and spring to increase lunchroom capacity, but did not mention where students would be redirected to during winter months.
According to Kelly, superintendent Dr. Russell Johnston sought out ideas from student leaders. Architects did not mention any other plans to gather student feedback on how these “Learning Commons” would be used, as no students came to give feedback at that portion of the forum.
White and Lund, suggesting a Google Form for students to offer feedback, emphasized the importance of student voice in the improvements.
“Having the student perspective on what we need as a community is what will really make this renovation special and make Strath Haven a better place,” White said.
Johnston says construction will not start until the end of next year.
“Everything we’re showing you right now, we should approach it as a concept,” Johnston said. “Let’s see what we can really afford as we price it out and bring more information forward.”
Slide deck shared at the March 5 Community Forum
From Principal’s Update, March 11
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