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Youngstown school building program ends with Woodrow Wilson Middle School
By Denise Dick
Woodrow Wilson Middle school
Gallery
$187 million program
Wilson Middle School is the 13th and final school on the city school district’s construction list. The district razed more than a dozen old buildings as part of the roughly $187 million project. New buildings or renovated buildings:
ELEMENTARIES
Harding Taft Williamson Paul C. Bunn Kirkmere (renovation) Martin Luther King W.M. McGuffey
MIDDLE SCHOOLS
P. Ross Berry Volney Rogers Wilson
HIGH SCHOOLS
East Chaney
CAREER CENTER
Choffin (renovation)
Source: Youngstown schools
By DENISE DICK
YOUNGSTOWN
When middle school students on the city’s South Side return to school Aug. 26, they’ll be learning in a new building with updated technology and improved security.
“This is the last building,” said Harry Evans, the school district’s chief of operations.
The new $13 million Woodrow Wilson Middle School, on the site of the old high school of the same name, is the last school building in the district’s building program that started in 2000.
The roughly $187 million project built or renovated 13 school buildings, with the Ohio School Facilities Commission covering 80 percent of the costs.
The new one-floor Wilson, at Gibson Street and Indianola Avenue, boasts 28 classrooms and 67,500 square feet. It was built to house 350 students in grades six through eight and is handicapped-accessible.
Each classroom has a window to allow natural light to filter in, and blinds encased between two window panes enable teachers to limit the glare, Evans said.
Each classroom also comes with sound-enhancement equipment to allow students to more clearly hear the teacher. Flat screen televisions with DVD players for educational use, overhead projectors and SMART Boards also are part of the new technology.
A telephone is provided in all rooms.
A cafetorium — a combination auditorium and cafeteria — is separated from the gymnasium by a movable wall. That allows a bigger space for larger events.
Sound panels to absorb noise and reduce echo were installed in those spaces, as well as in the music room, which serves the band and choir.
Though each regular classroom includes five computers for students, the school also has a computer lab.
Two other classrooms share a bathroom complete with shower and may be used for special education or for regular class, depending on the need.
“They have that flexibility,” said Brad Adams of Heery International Inc., the school district’s construction project manager for the building program.
Heery is based in Atlanta but has a regional office in Cleveland.
What’s called a modular-tech classroom offers students the opportunity to do computer-aided drawing and robotics projects.
“It’s shop for the 21st century,” Adams said. To provide security, 16 cameras are positioned both inside and outside the school building.
“They record 24-7,” Evans said. “If something happens, we have the ability to go back through the tape.”
Previously, schools had cameras, but they didn’t record.
But, not all of the features are new, however.
A marble 1954 war memorial located outside of the gym in the old high school was removed before that building’s demolition and placed near the flagpole on the outside of the new school.