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The new Winona Area Learning Center has plenty of amenities the old one never did.
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Winona Area Learning Center student, Mike Mendez, 18, helps his science teacher, Joel Bruels, arrange books and shelves in the science classroom of the new WALC building on West Third street Friday. The classrooms are flooded with natural light from large banks of south-facing windows, part of the green design of the building. Classes begin at the new school on Monday.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News) |
Four years after the Winona Area Public School board began looking, the ALC is set to begin classes Monday in its new home behind Jefferson Elementary.
The new building was approved after an often contentious debate about where to put the alternative school and several plans that fell through. Some folks didn’t want it near their homes. Some didn’t think it should be near an elementary school. Some balked at the $2.4 million price tag. Three school board members who took office in January even tried to rescind the December decision to build it.
But for those who teach and learn there, it’s a dream come true.
“Pinch me. Pinch me,” said Kathy Espe, one of two middle grade teachers who has been at the ALC for more than a decade and has changed buildings three times in as many years as the district struggled to find classroom space. “Did we ever think this would happen?”
Space.
Coordinator Deb Moe stretched her arms out as she walked down the hall. She couldn’t do that in the old building, which was housed since the early 1990s in a former bar on West Fifth Street. Some of the classrooms are twice as big.
Teachers were almost giddy as they set up their new classrooms Friday.
“It still feels like a dream,” said math teacher Kristin Wicks, who has spent her four year teaching career at the old ALC.
Science teacher Joe Bruels was happy about having actual lab tables with gas and water supplies.
Light.
Everyone was excited about the windows.
Adam Rislov’s old classroom had one small window. “It felt like you were in jail,” said Miranda Wolfe, a senior who was helping unpack books Friday.
Wicks’ room had none.
Banks of windows in every classroom look out toward Jefferson school and the bluffs beyond. They aren’t just there for the view.
The southern facing windows are designed to bring in natural light and help heat the space. Sensors in the classrooms adjust the overhead lights to save energy when they aren’t needed.
It’s one of the building’s energy-saving features that Bruels plans to incorporate into his curriculum.
One roof.
The new building will finally put all the school’s functions under the same roof and provide space for adult education classrooms. On West Fifth Street, the school occupied two buildings — across the street from each other — while childcare services were provided in an adjacent trailer.
A custodian.
“We’ve never had one before,” Moe said.
And Rick Kuusisto won’t have to worry about a boiler overheating.
The school pulls its heat from the ground using a geo-thermal system that can also cool it in the summer. It added about $100,000 to the price tag, but the energy savings should offset that in seven to eight years, said Scott Hannon, the district’s academic affairs director, who started the alternative school 22 years and several homes ago.
Dignity.
Four students helped unpack books in Rislov’s English classroom. On Thursday, about 25 helped move boxes and furniture.
They were excited about finally having lockers and a lunch room so they don’t have to leave every day to eat.
“We tried to make it an inviting place,” Hannon said.
Rislov said the new building is a positive change that’s “going to help with attitudes.”
“It’s nice to actually have a school and not be in an old bar,” Wolfe said. “And hopefully it will get rid of our bad name.”
lone-wolf wrote on Dec 10, 2007 8:17 AM: