As heavy rainfall Friday afternoon created small ponds outside of Washington Local Schools’ soon-to-open Shoreland Elementary School, inside construction crews were hard at work putting on the building’s finishing touches.
In about a week, roughly 700 children will begin pouring into the hallways. The experience will be new not only for kindergarteners but returning Shoreland students who previously were in the structure on East Harbor Avenue.
Once inside, they’ll be treated to more spacious classrooms, chairs and desks that swivel, rock, and roll where they’re needed.
The cafeteria is designed more like a café, with nearby enclosed, quiet spaces as well. Common areas provide televisions and soft furniture while the hallways have walls with various 3D patterns specifically made for touching along with artistic bench-like structures that jut out.
They’re the type of structures that one might imagine a student being chided for climbing on, but at the new Shoreland, Superintendent Kadee Anstadt said moving, touching, and — at times — climbing is encouraged.
“So all the things that you would have gotten yelled at we've incorporated into our school,” she said. “You remember your teacher telling you to sit still? Well, now we don't want you to sit still. We want you to be able to wake up. And in the classroom, I think, especially since we've all been home working, none of us sit straight at a desk and write. We want to find our most comfortable chair and throw our laptop on our lap.”
Washington Local parent Mellisa Zaborski said she’s excited for her 10-year-old son, Mason, to attend the school, particularly after the prior two academic years of dealing with virtual learning and other inconveniences of the pandemic.
She said her son is a special education student, and she believes the new Shoreland will provide a better learning space for him.
Along with the free-touch walls, Ms. Zaborski appreciates that the new building offers various calming spaces and quiet rooms, which include a sound-suppressing padded room equipped with color-changing soft light.
And in light of school shootings throughout the past year, Ms. Zaborski welcomes that the new building has an added security feature where all the doors leading to classrooms can be closed and locked with the push of an emergency button.
“I'm happy and excited that Shoreland has come up with so many different creative ideas and, you know, different areas of the school that is going to protect our students and be able to keep them calm at the same time,” she said. “So we're really excited for him to start shortly this year, and he’s been excited as well.
“I think my son's going to be very pleased to be a Firebird,” she added.
Washington Local officials are preparing to open two new schools, with Silver Creek Elementary — located on Northover Road — also welcoming students in roughly a week with similar amenities.
The district has spent about $51.2 million to build the schools, with Shoreland now south of its former namesake while former Jackman and Wernert schools are now combined to become Silver Creek. The former Shoreland school was razed, with the space turned into a field, while the former Jackman building was also demolished and is being utilized as space for staff parking and parent drop-off.
Funding for the project came from revenue generated by a 3-mill bond levy district voters approved in 2019. That local funding also qualified Washington Local for about $180 million in state funds for future building projects.
Next on the list is building a new junior high school, Ms. Anstadt said. Then officials will then turn their eyes on five other elementary school buildings — some of which will likewise be combined, similar to Jackman and Wernert. Ms. Anstadt said officials haven’t yet solidified a plan for those yet.
Meanwhile, the district will hold a ribbon cutting for Shoreland at 5 p.m. Monday at 5650 Suder Ave. and another for Silver Creek at 5 p.m. Tuesday at 2010 Northover Rd. Family open houses will be 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Aug. 16 and community walkthroughs will be 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Sept. 24.
First Published August 6, 2022, 2:04 p.m.
