Ridge Street School starts taking shape

Kindergarteners in Geri Fisher’s class politely put their belongings away on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 14—storing bags and coats in their freshly built cubbies, ensuring their water bottles were easily accessible.

When they were done, they came to a group consensus to proudly reward themselves with a collective seal of approval, positioning their hands behind their necks and barking as they clapped their elbows together.

The celebrative notion was appropriate. They had successfully practiced their new routine in their brand new Blind Brook classroom.

The $44.7 million bond project construction at Ridge Street Elementary is coming together, with a major element of the work, a new wing of classrooms, finally opening and gradually welcoming students inside for learning. Significantly, the new space starts to give a clear image of what the final product will look like. The once conceptual renovations on paper are transforming into a tangible reality.

“I’m starting to get questions from parents about when we’re going to renovate the rest of the building,” Interim Superintendent Dr. Colin Byrne laughed while walking through the new facility. “I’m like, let’s just get this project done first, then we’ll worry about the rest. I get it, the wing is new, it’s clean, it looks nice. You see this, and you want it for everything.”

It was a joyous, long overdue opening of the classrooms after a complicated start to the school year. Initially, the district was hoping to open the wing in September. But after they were forced by the State Education Department to shut down the building a few days into the semester due to a miscommunication over fire safety concerns and whether the school held a valid Certificate of Occupancy, those plans did not pan out.

Ultimately, parts of the elementary school were permitted to reopen in October, but some classrooms were placed into temporary learning spaces—such as the gym, art and music rooms—while the district addressed the state’s concerns. On Nov. 23, however, the new wing was approved.

Ridge Street Elementary School will be a transformed institution by the time the construction is complete. The bond—approved by voters in October 2017—facilitated the demolition of the old cafeteria and Butler Building, an over-used temporary wing that housed kindergartners and first-graders for decades, and brought construction of a new, modernized wing that is now home to those grades.

Next, the construction crews are shifting their focus toward completing a grand courtyard, designed to support educational activity. And finally, if the community passes the $6 million bond proposal needed to finish the project on Tuesday, Dec. 21, the district will complete the cafetorium, a new cafeteria/auditorium hybrid that currently resembles a steel skeleton of an addition.

The project, Byrne explained, was designed to make Ridge Street School more fluid. It’s a reshaping from the prior model that had wings jutting out in various directions, by turning the building into an interconnected loop around the courtyard with the cafetorium connecting the major halls.

Students have been moving into their new classrooms over the last two weeks, gradually, with the intent of preventing as much learning disruption as possible. By Friday, Dec. 17, Byrne said they hope all the kindergarten and first grade classes are situated.

There will still be third graders transitioning into new spaces in the upcoming weeks—classes that were also impacted by the shuffle, as some original building rooms adjacent to the courtyard are not habitable due to inadequate egress plans related to construction.

District officials hope the courtyard will be finished by late-Winter—both so more classrooms can be used and because it will be a sight to see.

“It’s going to be an amphitheater space,” Byrne said, gazing out the window as crews rooted cement blocks into the ground. “Those blocks are going to be like benches, so teachers have an area where they can teach outside. It’s going to be a really interesting instructional space where teachers can do a lot with the kids. There’s going to be a greenhouse attached to the new wing which can be accessed indoors and outdoors.”

Currently, there are third grade classes using the library and computer lab, which administrators are planning to move to the specialty classrooms where kindergartners were previously learning.

“Those specialty classes—art, music and STEAM—the teachers have been doing push in classes,” the interim superintendent said. “But they will be getting their own spaces when all of this is over.”

With first graders moving out of the downstairs gymnasium, the district will be able to convert that space into a temporary cafeteria, which Byrne said will likely be used for the rest of the year while the cafetorium finishes construction.

“Gym class right now is outside as much as it can be,” he said. It’s been an unusually warm winter, he laughed, which has been working in their favor both for student activities and construction productivity. “When the weather gets bad, this year we’ll have to have gym inside their classrooms. That’s going to be one of the last things that happens, unfortunately, because we need the gym space for kids to eat.”

Ideally, by the end of the school year, the transformation of Ridge Street Elementary School will be complete. It’s a highly anticipated date, where the community and district can finally put an end to the complicated saga and enjoy the fruits of their stress and labor.