Terrebonne high schools shift to 7 period day
July 22, 2014Lawsuit filed to stop Common Core in Louisiana
July 22, 2014
There are no marker boards, and every classroom has five desktop computers. But a more salient mark that the newly constructed Grand Caillou Middle School is a manifestation of the times is also more succinct: Its base rests at 10 feet above sea level.
Roughly 360 fifth- to eighth-grade students will break in the new building this year, principal Cindy Gray said. They will roam the spacious hallways, learn in 15 classrooms, a computer lab and the band room, mingle in a massive breezeway and dine in the 8,200-square foot cafeteria, which doubles as the school’s auditorium.
“It’s just so sleek and modern,” said Rhonda Routier, special education teacher at Grand Caillou Middle. “It looks like a place of learning and excellence.”
Routier has taught in the district for 24 years and at Grand Caillou Middle for three.
She toured the new school and showed off her classroom after dignitaries concluded a praise-laden ribbon-cutting ceremony last week.
The school board president, superintendent, principal and assistant principal, as well as the district attorney, a captain with the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office and the project’s principal designers and contractor, spoke at the ceremony.
They commended one another for leading a collaborative community that provided Terrebonne’s first new school in 27 years, a replacement to a building constructed before World War II.
“Some things are here today and gone tomorrow,” Superintendent Philip Martin said. “This building is here today, and it will be here tomorrow. It will be perpetual for many generations.”
The school system will pay down the $15-plus million in interest-free bonds sold to finance construction with an existing 1-cent sales tax. Martin said the arrangement allowed the district to save millions in interest fees.
Walter Land Company donated 17 acres of land at 2161 Grand Caillou Road, a two-lane highway near industrial properties in east Houma. There remains enough space to add wings to the 57,000-square-foot school in the future, if necessary, officials said.
The Merlin Group, based in Houma, designed the building, and Thibodaux-based Thompson Construction was the lead contractor of the new school. The same team designed and built the freshman center at H.L. Bourgeois High.
The school drew rave reviews, the parade of dignitaries parroting the same three-letter word: “Wow.”
“As an architect, I want to inspire you,” said Shelley Olivier, a project architect with The Merlin Group. “I want create space that motivates you, and I hope that everybody feels that way when they walk through the building and when the students sit in the space they are being educated in.”
The existing middle school, located about 10 miles away in Dulac, had been plagued with a persistent flood threat from tropical weather, direct hit or not, and was often put on alert by the mere presence of high tides, assistant superintendent Carol Davis said.
“I can remember a hurricane going in down in Galveston, and I don’t know how we flooded, but the water came up,” Davis said. “I’m thinking it was seven times that school flooded over the years. I can remember the mud and muck and having to repaint. We’ll never have that again.”
At 10 feet above sea level and located inside the so-called Thompson Road levee, the building’s first floor houses administrative offices, a commons area for students to gather and the “cafetorium” and kitchen. Outside, a canopy will allow for parental pickup while minimizing the nuisance of rain.
In the event water did rise the 10 feet necessary to inundate the first floor, the stained-concrete floor means cleanup crews can clear mud remnants with just a water hose.
All classrooms, outfitted with interactive Promethean boards, are on the second floor, which also has a computer lab with 32 machines, a yet-stocked library and the school’s band room. The second floor overhangs the first, lidding a breezeway below that, protected from the elements, resembles a parking garage without the cars.
“We have state-of-the-art technology here,” Gray, the principal, said. “We’re now up to the 21st century, so we’re ready to rock and roll.”
The new building will serve the same population base, but what was formerly a school for sixth through eighth grade will now take in fifth graders.
“The fifth graders that’s going to start in this facility will positively have their children and their great-grandchildren in this building,” school board President Roger “Dale” DeHart said.
Several people who toured the school remarked that it was extraordinary.
“I feel like I’m back in high school,” said Erin Gros, a Vandebilt Catholic graduate embarking on her first year of teaching. “I’ve never seen a middle school like this.”
Terrebonne School District officials showed off the new $15 million-plus Grand Caillou Middle School last week. At a 10-foot elevation, the south Terrebonne school is less susceptible to flooding.
