DECATUR — Stephen Decatur Middle School will temporarily become a high school again in August.
Opened in 1976, and Decatur’s last new school building until Hope Academy opened in 2005, Stephen Decatur was originally a high school but became a middle school in 2000 after Mound and Sunnyside schools at U.S. 51 and Mound Road were sold to eventually become the site for Target.
With the renovations of the two remaining high schools set to begin in the spring, the Decatur school board appointed a committee to figure out the most efficient way to manage the work without disrupting education.
“We have to maintain student learning,” said Duane McCoskey, a member of that committee. “We don’t want to cut things short trying to get things done. We had to consider what would be the impact on extracurriculars, music, drama, athletics, and what are the best use of funds available.”
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The committee’s recommendation, approved by the board on Jan. 10, was to move Stephen Decatur Middle School students to the former Decatur Area Technical Academy downtown, move Eisenhower High School students to Stephen Decatur until Eisenhower is finished, and move MacArthur High School students to Stephen Decatur after Eisenhower students move back to their own building, with the goal of putting MacArthur students back into their own building by January 2015.
It sounds complicated, but efforts can begin immediately to remodel the tech academy for middle school students because most of the building is unoccupied now that it’s become Heartland Technical Academy and moved most classes to Richland Community College.
“The nice thing about not having the tech academy being used, because only a few programs are meeting there, is that we have a lot of space to work on between now and the end of school (this year),” said Mike Sotiroff, director of buildings and grounds. “We’ll get most of the infrastructure things finished.”
That includes building new walls in some of the double-sized classrooms to make them into single classrooms, enlarging the cafeteria space, making a rental agreement with Skywalker International to use the gym space for Stephen Decatur sports and physical education classes. Once the school year ends, Sotiroff said, all the lockers and equipment at Eisenhower will be available for use at the tech academy because Eisenhower will be gutted for the remodeling.
“We’ve told the faculty that what they had at Stephen Decatur, they’ll have at the tech academy,” he said. “It won’t necessarily be the same desk or the same file cabinets, but they’ll have the same tools they had at Stephen Decatur.”
Because Stephen Decatur was a high school before, it’s already equipped with adequate athletic facilities for Eisenhower. Some repainting will be done to make it feel like Eisenhower, with signage and logos replaced, while the tech academy will have a similar treatment to make it into the new Stephen Decatur for the duration.
If all goes according to plan, the entire project will be finished by January 2015 and all three schools will be back “home” in their own buildings.
Work will not just be inside the buildings. Sotiroff is in talks with the city to close the portion of Jackson Street between the tech academy and Skywalker to make it safer for students, and a covered walkway is part of remodeling plans. Bus routes will have to be altered, as high school students use city buses instead of school buses. The Special Education Alternative Program will move to Phoenix Academy and the other middle school special education students will move to Thomas Jefferson Middle School.
“It’s an exciting time for Decatur public schools as it relates to facilities,” Superintendent Gloria Davis said in a speech to the Decatur AMBUCS. “We’re very proud and pleased about the progress we’ve managed to make.”
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