Volunteers transform old school building

A career exploration laboratory has been added to the building.
By IAN HILL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
NORTH JACKSON -- Halls of the 90-year-old Jackson-Milton school building on Mahoning Avenue have been bustling with activity this summer.
Volunteers, some of them teachers or school board members, have been painting walls and sanding hardwood floors to prepare a section of the building to serve as the district's new middle school.
"What a difference it's going to make for the kids," said Hallie Flickinger, a seventh-grade science teacher, as she organized her room. "It's beautiful, it's uplifting, it's inspiring."
Shop teacher Walt Vrabel added, "there's going to be a sense of pride coming out, something that will show through."
About 240 pupils in grades six through eight are set to attend the middle school beginning Sept. 3. The school will have 17 rooms on three floors in the front of the building that has been Jackson-Milton High School.
The school board is set to dedicate the new middle school before its meeting tonight.
High school students will continue to attend class in the back of the building. In the past, sixth-graders went to school with pupils in kindergarten through fifth grade at the elementary school on Mahoning Avenue, while seventh- and eighth-graders were at the high school.
Community effort
Superintendent Buck Palmer said the new school will help pupils to make the transition from elementary school to high school.
On a recent weekday, volunteers in shorts and T-shirts worked to organize desks, hang pupil artwork, and put the finishing touches on the stairs between the middle school and the high school.
Most of the decades-old hardwood floors and oak borders in the classroom have been polished and shined, while the walls in the building were painted blue and gray, the school colors.
"It kind of created the learning environment we were looking for, but kept that old fashioned character," said new Principal Lisa Whitacre, who was an instructional consultant for the Mahoning County Educational Service Center last year.
The walls of the school, which was built in 1913, had been a light brown, and many of the hardwood floors had been scratched and nearly worn through. Flickinger described the old atmosphere as "oppressive."
Shared space
Middle school pupils will arrive at and leave the building at the same time as high school students. Each school, however, has its own entrance.
Pupils from both schools will share the building's gym, cafeteria, and art, band and choir rooms.
On the school's bottom floor, Vrabel was helping to set up the new "career exploration lab" that has been added to the school. The lab has computers and equipment designed to help pupils in grades eight through 12 to learn about jobs in medicine, plumbing, construction, electronics and other fields.
"This is state of the art stuff," Vrabel said.
Mahoning County Career and Technical Center donated equipment in the career lab.
Palmer said about $150,000 from the district's permanent improvement levy was spent on renovating the front of the building for the high school.
hill@vindy.com