On September 8, 2008 North Haven will open its new school for the academic year. With a population of 67 students and 14 full-time teachers, the North Haven Community School is the smallest public K-12 school in the state.
As I walked around the campus recently with long-time principal Barney Hallowell, the finishing touches were being put on buildings and grounds begun 14 months ago by a team of construction workers from the mainland.
Excitement over the opening of the new school has spread throughout the North Haven community. The fact that the team of construction workers leaves Rockland every morning at a.m. on the “crew boat” and returns 12 hours later, is very much appreciated by island residents and symbolizes the dedication that the entire project has engendered. School Superintendent Tom Marx says, “they have just done a super job.”
Another example of the good will the project has produced is the collaboration between the construction management team, which combines Steve Blatt, a Portland architect, the builder, Bruce & Lakka, Inc. from Rockport and school officials. The school also hired a commissioning agent, the Turner Company, who tested the design process from beginning to end.
Twelve years ago, when the issue of accreditation came up, Barney Hallowell and others realized that, at the very least, the old school was in need of major remodeling.
After extensive discussions with the community, a building committee was formed to identify specific goals. Should a new school be built? Should the old one be expanded? The old school had a number of problems, but the main one was that it was simply too small. As arts coordinator Lisa Shields observed, “the programs were great but the facilities were poor.”
Hallowell emphasized that the process has been a collaborative affair from beginning to end. After extensive discussions within the community, the decision was made to build a new school. A fund-raising committee, chaired by state representative Hannah Pingree, was formed and a remarkable $6.23 million was raised in private donations. (The town contributed an additional $1.9 million). Having such a high proportion of private funding meant the designers were less constrained by state requirements.
The new school represents collaboration with the North Haven community as well. For example, the resources of the school library and the town library are linked together. Early on a decision was made to use the beautiful theater arts center at Waterman’s Community Center and not to build a separate auditorium. And after years of using the recreation hall in town, the school has a full size gymnasium with a side entrance for public access. The gym and adjacent fitness room are open to the community when not in use by the school.
The new North Haven Community School has three interconnected buildings or blocks, one each for the elementary, middle and high schools.
The design puts the library as well as the music and art rooms in the center of the complex to emphasize their importance for all students, and yet no area is irrelevant. Space is suited to needs of the students. For example, the high school has a student lounge, which, Hallowell says, “is a room where the older kids can get away.”
Different-sized elementary school classrooms allow for variations in numbers of younger children. Indeed, the space allotments throughout the school need to be flexible, since over the years the student population has ranged from a high of 88 to a low of 48.
Hallowell is too modest a man to emphasize the vital role he has played in the process, but to quote Superintendent Marx, “Barney Hallowell has been deeply involved in every aspect of the planning and building. He has put his reputation on the line more than once.” When the school received a glowing accreditation report 10 years ago, his policies were vindicated.
Hallowell’s commitment as an educator is obvious. “The school is the critical institution on the island,” he said recently. “It is an area the whole community can rally around for everything from the Knowledge Fair we have every spring, to basketball games, to concerts and shows at Waterman’s.”
During our tour Hallowell explained that the school emphasizes place-based, experiential education. Simply put this means that in addition to the classroom, the faculty uses facilities on the entire island for teaching.
For example, the nearby North Haven Historical Society has an Island Institute Fellow, Betsy Walker, who also will work with social studies students on a range of projects from family genealogy to island history. Science students work with the boatyard to help them meet new federal guidelines for paint disposal, while others test the toxicity level in clams and mussels.
Students also have off-island educational experiences. This fall the high school will spend a week canoeing and camping on the St. Croix River studying the history of the area, while the middle school travels to Baxter State Park, where they will climb and study the ecology of Mt. Katahdin. And every four years the entire high school goes to France for two weeks of cultural immersion at their sister school in a suburb of Paris.
Whenever students return from a trip or complete a project, in addition to a written report, they give visual and/or oral presentations at Waterman’s, thus providing another point of contact between school and community.
Not surprisingly the new North Haven school is very green, which is to say it is extremely energy efficient. “The concept is very important to the school and to the island,” Hallowell emphasized. “We have to operate so the community can afford us.”
Interestingly, the new school is more than twice as large, 22,000 square feet, as the old, yet the cost to heat it will be about the same.
The roof has solar panels for heating and electricity. The panels also generate hot water, which provides radiant heating for floors in the entire building with the exception of the gymnasium. At one point I commented on how bright the classrooms were.
Hallowell told me that every room has two “aspects of light.” Large windows that let in sunlight are complimented by track lighting inside. An unusual feature is that the interior lights are designed to dim automatically when it is brighter outside, a process called “daylighting.”
North Haven students are in for a treat this fall. They will be housed in an innovative and exciting new facility, staffed by a creative faculty and led by a dedicated principal.