Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Utsler)

Kayla Sands is already looking forward to her children’s graduations.

Her son, Jeffrey, now in the eighth grade, will be a part of the last graduating class at the current South Junior High School in Lawrence. Her younger son, Michael, now in the seventh grade, will be in the first class to graduate from the new South Junior High, set to open in August 2007.

“We’re very excited about the new school and getting a chance to be a part of history,” Sands said.

In 2005 Lawrence residents voted on and passed a bond issue giving USD 497 permission to rebuild the junior high, 2734 Louisiana St.

The new school will feature numerous security and technology upgrades compared to the current school, which officials said has become out of date and unfit for educational use. Grounds crews have already begun soil work to create access roads and parking lots for construction workers and plan to break ground within the next couple weeks.

Tom Bracciano, the division director of operations and facility planning, said that security technology will be one of the main focuses when the time comes to put the finishing touches on the new school.

“Security will be a lot better in this new building,” Bracciano said.

The main security upgrade involves proximity cards that allow users access to the building. Each staff member—teachers, custodians, office staff and other employees—will be given a key card that is automatically scanned as it is brought towards a door. Certain employees will be given access to specific doors at specific times, and the doors will lock if someone who is not supposed to be there tries to come inside.

“If you’re not allowed to use that door, the security camera will turn and take a picture of you and time stamp it, so we’ll know you were trying to get in that door when you weren’t supposed to be,” Bracciano said.

The security system will be tied back to the network at the school district office and in the homes of the school district employees. Through the network officials can manage who has access to which doors and program the doors to act accordingly. Also, the cards will function as time cards and attendance records, so when a staff member walks through a door they are automatically clocked in and out. This will greatly improve the security of the building, but Superintendent Randy Weseman doesn’t want people to become concerned with the current level of student safety at school.

“I don’t want to make it seem like our schools are dangerous or not up to par with safety regulations, because that’s certainly not the case,” Weseman said. “But this is a state of the art system and it will greatly improve our situation.”

Apart from security of the new building, the proximity cards will also be used to regulate the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, thereby effectively integrating energy management into the system. For example, when a custodian arrives first thing in the morning, his access to the building by use of his key card might also automatically turn on the lights and heat in certain parts of the building. The same process applies to leaving at night, with the system automatically ensuring that all the lights are turned off, thereby saving energy.

The fire alarms and phone systems will also be monitored at the control center and fully integrated into the network. Bracciano said that though South Junior High will be the first school in Lawrence to have this system, it will eventually become standard and will soon be integrated into the other three junior highs.

“One thing we’ve done in all our designs is design them for equity so that all of our buildings will be able to offer the same curriculum and technology,” he said.

Installing and managing an integrated security system isn’t the only task at hand. The construction, which will cost $24 million, will completely rebuild South Junior High and renovate parts of the neighboring Broken Arrow Elementary School. The two schools will be connected and share a cafeteria. The money will come from federal bonds to be repaid over 20 years through taxpayer money.

The school will be 30,000 square feet larger and could accommodate and additional 150 students. Bracciano said that South Junior High’s attendance numbers have outgrown its available space, evident in the use of five portable classrooms situated outside of the building along the south side of the main parking lot. The new facility will be built just behind the existing school. Classes will continue in the old school until the new one opens in August 2007.

Weseman said that this upgrade has been a long time coming.

“It’s a building that’s no longer suitable for the educational style we use today,” Weseman said. “Space is inadequate and the technology is not up to par.”

One of the main issues, he said, is computers and integrating them into a network system. It is difficult to rewire the whole school—or do any other type of major renovations—because it was built in the 1960s using asbestos as a form of thermal insulation. Back then builders didn’t know as much about the dangers and problems associated with asbestos. According to Weseman, the cost of taking it out would be nearly as great as the cost of rebuilding the school entirely.

To get rid of asbestos you have to get into the infrastructure of the building and it’s a very complicated and sophisticated process to ensure safety and avoid potential health problems,” Weseman said.

Bracciano agrees.

“We looked at the cost of renovation,” he said. “We would not have been able to renovate it to our standards.”

He said, however, that the asbestos was just a minor factor in the decision to build a new school.

“It really wasn’t just the asbestos, Bracciano said. “It was a poorly designed building and it didn’t fit into our educational standards anymore.”

Bracciano said the building was originally designed to be an open facility with no walls; rather, the classrooms were separated by dividers that didn’t connect to the ceiling, much like an office floor full of cubicles. He said they found out shortly after they built it that it didn’t function very well that way, so they added walls. The problem, then, is that the air-conditioning and heating systems were not designed to function with walls.

“Heating and cooling are very poor, there’s no daylight, it’s a round building, it’s cramped and circulation is terrible,” he said.

The design of the building is unique and often puzzling to youngsters who wander around inside for the first time.

It’s completely round and there is just one main hallway that goes all the way around the circumference of the building, with classrooms in the next ring, and the office and library in the middle of the school. Also, the only daylight in the building comes from doors near the lockers, situated at five points around the main hallway, far away from the nearest classrooms.

“It was weird at first,” Michael Sands, seventh grader, said. “I got used to it, but I still think it’s dumb.”

The new building will feature plenty of natural light. The second floor will feature several skylights and of course there will be plenty of windows all around the school. Bracciano said the building will be two stories simply because of a lack of construction space. Officials wanted to keep the existing track and football field, so the new building will go directly behind the old one.

“If you leave the existing building there you really have a small footprint to set that building on.”

The existing building will then be torn down upon completion of the new one. Bracciano plans to keep the desks, chairs and some usable cabinets, and perhaps bricks to make a patio.

Any safety concerns about there being a construction site near an elementary, junior high school and public park are being addressed, according to Bracciano. He said there will be heavy fencing around the area, safety issues will be brought up at every morning contractor meeting and workers will keep a watchful eye on any kids possibly in the way of danger.

“These people have built schools before,” he said. “They’ve worked around kids before, and we’ll have open communication with the building administrators and the contractor staff, and no asbestos or overhead work will be done when the kids are in the buildings.”

Contractors have already begun soil work, which includes replacing and compacting fill dirt in areas that collect water. They've also started to pave access roads and parking lots for employees go get to and from the site.

Weseman hopes that this will be the last major construction for USD 497 for a while. He said the school district has a plot of 50 acres of land west of town near the South Lawrence Trafficway, but said he doesn’t think it will be used for quite a while after this project. For the time being, the Sands family agrees that this construction will be quite enough.

“It might be a little noisy around the neighborhood, but it will be worth it,” Kayla Sands said.