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Hubbard Middle School opening finishes campus
By Danny Restivo
HUBBARD
This year marks the first time Hubbard science teachers won’t have to worry about a nauseated student who just peeled back the skin of a frog to look inside.
“Personally, I think some of the students would rather cut open a real frog, but it’s still going to work,” said Helene Jordan, a seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Hubbard Middle School. For 27 years, she has taught amphibian biology through hands-on dissection.
Now, when Jordan teaches students about biology, they won’t have to pierce through skin with a knife. Instead, she will use a smart board to teach dissection and thereby lessen chances of a grotesque experience for students.
The touch-screen technology will be at the front of every classroom in the new Hubbard Middle School, which opens Monday.
The new school is nestled between the adjoining elementary and high schools, which opened in 2011 and 2010, respectively. Its opening culminates a $56 million project funded partly by the Ohio Department of Education’s School Facilities Commission.
The schools, which will educate all of the district’s 2,100 students, received 68 percent of funding from the commission, and the district covered the remaining costs through the issuance of 27-year bonds in 2006. Middle school Principal Phil Latessa said without the community covering the remaining 32 percent, the 298,000-square-foot facility and its amenities would not be possible.
“This whole campus is a keystone of the community,” he said. “The people of Hubbard made this happen.”
With students in kindergarten through grade 12, high school Principal Ron Garret said the new campus will be a location for many events.
“This school will be full of athletic and academic activities year-round,” he said.
When the tardy bell rings at 7:27 a.m. Monday, Hubbard Middle School students may notice climate-controlled rooms, a new cafeteria with two 60-inch flat-screen televisions that will post announcements and a voice filtration system that will amplify instructors’ voices when they’re teaching.
No matter what the technology is, Latessa believes teachers make learning possible.
“It all boils down to instruction,” he said. “We’ve just managed to expand the information pipeline with the added technology.”
Although the new technology means the end of blackboards and chalk at the school, Jordan is excited to teach her students about the wonders of science.
The self-described “technological novice” said she had to spend part of the summer learning the intricacies of the board so she could properly teach her students.
“I have to learn just like they do, but I love my job,” she said. “Or otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”