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Bluffview music teacher Pat Chapman had to practically stand still at the front of trombones, trumpets and tubas, and if she wanted to walk to the back, she’d have to climb over those little chairs.
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Bluffview Montessori science teacher Lisa Clifford, 28, unpacks posters Thursday while moving into the new science lab. The lab is part of a 9,000- square-foot addition recently added to Bluffview's existing building on Gilmore Avenue.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News) |
In Lisa Clifford’s science classroom, lessons were conducted in a setting simply described as a sink and a table. When experiments involving odor-heavy elements were done, everybody knew about it, and not because they were told.
Bluffview, like other public schools in Winona, started its school year Tuesday. Students at the charter school on Gilmore Avenue were greeted by a newly expanded building, with freshly carpeted rooms and newly designed hallways that added about 9,400 square feet, or about a third of its previous size. The expansion includes a new band room, a combined seventh-eighth grade room complete with a dedicated
science area and a hallway that can be used for lunch and studying, along with various nooks and crannies.
The new space added to the school’s northeast corner offers a
little privacy for science, a little technology for history and a little elbow room for playing music.
“The environment is so much better,” Chapman said in the newly carpeted band room. “For starters, I can actually walk in here.”
Creative expansion options
At the same time Bluffview has been adding on, Ridgeway Community School — a charter on the other side of the district — has been finishing up the first phase of its own expansion plan. Both schools added a significantly sized wing to their existing buildings to help accommodate enrollment and solidify their standing. Both had to get creative in how they funded the projects.
Charter schools, unlike traditional districts, cannot levy taxes to buy or construct buildings for its students. Instead, they receive state aid to lease buildings on top of per-pupil aid for instruction. Charter school officials have said this makes it difficult to create a sense of permanency for their institutions, because they are at the whim of landlords and can have trouble making improvements to their schools.
To address those concerns, some charter schools have set up non-profit organizations to do the building and owning for them. BMS Building Corp., a nonprofit that owns the Bluffview building, funded its expansion — which will cost about $1.4 million. Bluffview in turn pays BMS rent with the lease aid it receives from the state.
Ridgeway set up the Ridgeway Community Association, a nonprofit that has representatives from the school and Pleasantville Township. The school could not have done parts of its expansion without the RCA, Dansingburg said.
“A nonprofit is the most cost-effective landlord that we can have,” Ridgeway director Jodi Dansingburg said.
Having the community involved with the corporation also allows those not affiliated with the school to feel they have a stake in it.
Riverway Learning Community, a charter school in Minnesota City, has a corporation called the Friends of Riverway Learning Community Foundation, which is seeking nonprofit status. The school has plans to either buy or build a facility to accommodate growth in the next few years. Ownership of a building is the only way for a school such as Riverway to feel secure, both financially and as an educational institution, director Laurie Krause said.
Some public officials are concerned the practice of acquiring property through creating affiliate building corporations allows charters to access additional tax dollars without voter approval.
But charter school officials see it a different way.
“Owning versus leasing is the most fiscally responsibly use of public money,” Krause said.
They aren’t circumventing the law, local charter school officials say, and having a building corporation ensures their landlords have the schools’ best interests in mind. Because they are nonprofits, the corporations aren’t looking to make any money.
“Building ownership (through a building corporation) is the only way we can guarantee securing a building,” Krause said.
Happy to have it
The seventh-eighth grade teachers at Bluffview sat around a table in their new room Thursday, supplies strewn across the floor and boxes ready to be unpacked. Tall shelves create pseudo walls between subject areas. The shelves offer “visual isolation,” said Leslie Hittner, director of operations at Bluffview.
Last year, the class had more than 40 students, well beyond the old room’s capacity. The shelves and the extra eight to 10 feet for each subject area should help sometimes-boisterous classes from disturbing others, history teacher Najib Schlosstein said.
“On occasion, you could make some heads turn if you had a particularly loud class,” he said.
The group of teachers mockingly looked at English instructor Josh Greer, who chuckled while he sheepishly hung his head.
Across the hall in the band room, Chapman stood in her new conducting space. Sound buffers now hang from the ceilings, and combined with the new carpeting, the acoustic quality of the room should be much better than before, she said.
But it’s the space that really excites Chapman. The old music room was meant to accommodate about 30 students. Growth in the popularity of vocal and instrumental instruction — which shared the room — caused some groups to balloon to almost 90 members and made scheduling a nightmare. Now, the old room will be dedicated to vocal training, while the new room will house bands and one-on-one instruction.
Chapman said in the old setup, students had to huddle around music stands in groups of three due to lack of space. Now, the extra room also will allow students to concentrate on their own music, she said.
“The quality of instruction is going to go up,” she said.
New space isn’t the only thing the Bluffview community has to look forward to this year. The school recently received a grant for an intervention specialist, who
focuses on identifying problem areas in the classroom, Hittner said.
“The real secret to helping struggling students is to intervene early with their learning,” Hittner said.
In the new classroom, computers that used to be scattered about the room now are placed in a dedicated area along the side, giving easy access for students. The science area is tucked in the side and enclosed in its own room, with tables set up for increased hands-on work. Even Bluffview’s Brushfire Radio — an in-house radio program and class — has a new space.
The expansion isn’t complete yet. Lockers still are on order, and grass that was planted after construction is still filling in. But now, many of the ad-libs the school once had to do just to make things work are afterthoughts. Previously, to do science experiments that smelled too strongly to be done indoors, students took the projects outside.
“Now, we can do science on a rainy day,” Hittner said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Nolan Rosenkrans may be reached at (507) 453-3519 or at nolan.rosenkrans@lee.net.
