By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
It almost demands a new language to describe Dowagiac Middle School.
Gone is "teachers' lounge." Its more politically correct name? "Workroom."
Family living is an exposure class for boys as well as girls to learn how to cook a few things and to sew on buttons and learn other skills that are handy no matter your gender.
The Performing Arts Center is "far more than an auditorium" - just as the gymnasium was bumped up from 12,000 to 15,000 square feet. Orange vinyl hydraulic curtains can reconfigure gym space so a basketball game can take place simultaneously with volleyball practice. A gray sling suspends wrestling mats aloft until they need to be lowered.
There are four locker rooms - two boys, two girls, with larger orange lockers for teams than physical education classes.
A new class, Healthy Lifestyles, will combine phys ed with health in response to alarming obesity trends.
Students don't sign up for metal shop or wood shop anymore, but "industrial technology." At Union High the old wood shop became a weight room. The reconfigured metal shop became a computerized industrial technology lab.
Words not part of that vocabulary to describe the gorgeous new school on Riverside Drive are "over budget."
After the $23.7 million bond issue passed Nov. 12, 2001, after three failed tries for a high school, bonds sold in Chicago in January 2002 at very favorable rates. Then in March 2002, bids came back approximately $1 million below budget.
Since bond proceeds are limited to being spent on the middle school construction project, despite other needs the district may have, such as roof replacement, a list of extras became affordable, from the Performing Arts Center to athletic facilities outside and the gymnasium inside.
Plus four at DUHS, 12 courts enables Dowagiac to host tournaments.
The middle school was built on 60 acres. Riverside Drive provides the only access for the near future, although a 100-foot easement could connect to Wilbur Hill Road someday.
The school district worked out a deal with the city that likewise allows for development of Riverside Drive south to Mathews Street.
Fanning Howey is the largest school architectural firm in the country, with two offices in Michigan, as well as Ohio, Florida, Washington, D.C., and Indiana. Dowagiac worked with the Michigan City office.
Crandall said, "One of the things that sold the board on Fanning Howey was the way it went about the design concept. They took a lot of time with design and wanted input from not just the board and administration," but teachers and the community. "We visited six or seven school districts that recently completed construction projects - other architects, as well. We begged, borrowed and stole ideas from all of them," such as the computer technology classroom Fanning Howey designed for Three Rivers.
A data projector which plugs into a computer projects on an angled screen across the top of the classroom. Or, students can swivel around to their keyboards at two-way work stations. Teachers can "see virtually every monitor from the front of the room," he said.
A Native American motif has subtly been integrated for the Chieftains, from rosettes in the terrazzo floors to arrowhead door pulls and wood inlays built into casing.
At 144,000 square feet, the new middle school is considerably larger than 114-square-foot DUHS, thanks to the Performing Arts Center which is the "dessert" at this banquet.
The gymnasium has been sized to afford flexibility for a number of teams to practice simultaneously as other events happen.
The superintendent led Rotarians through the carpeted seventh grade academic wing first. The middle school was built for 450 students up to 500. Middle school divides into two teams, orange and black, in each grade. A wide "team area" in each wing can accommodate all 80 to 100 members at once. Each team consists of about four classes who take all core courses together so that they can combine, say, a math class and a science class, for integrated learning.
The media center's "push-out window" juts out awash in natural light.
A production studio is equipped for students to make their own video announcements to transmit building wide on television sets in each room. For an event of the magnitude of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the whole building could tune into the same program.
Seurynck praised the construction management company, Skillman Corp., for overseeing the project to insure that "it's built really well. You look down the painted walls and you don't see any roller marks. They've held feet to the fire. Before ceiling tiles were in, utilities running through the building are all straight, level and bundled. It's really nicely done."
Crandall concurred. "A subcontractor commented to me, unsolicited, 'I've worked on a lot of schools and the quality of construction in this building is the best I've ever worked on.' I felt really good about that because he didn't have anything to gain or lose by that."
Twenty-six contractors helped build the school. At times, as many as 150 workers were on site.
Crandall pointed out to Rotarians, including President Herb Phillipson and Brooks Thomas, who remember attending a new building named Central, that black boards and chalk have been replaced by white boards and markers.
Security is also incorporated into the design. Cameras watch the only entry point off Riverside Drive. All doors are locked except for the one leading through the office.
Areas above lockers slant away from a vinyl bulletin-board material where posters and announcements can be hung out of reach. "Don't expect anything to be on the lockers. Tape pulls the paint off."
After completing the circuit through a self-contained academic area, the superintendent points out, "One of the things we can do that we like is closing double doors. If we have an event going on in the Performing Arts Center or in the gymnasium, the rest of the school is closed off, whether it's during the day or in the evening."
Two ticket windows can help direct the flow for something as big as the Miss Dowagiac Scholarship Pageant or a Dogwood Fine Arts Festival author.
Art, a spacious room on par with the1,500-square-foot science labs, has a potter's wheel and kiln for drying projects. Projects can be secured in a storage room.
Where acoustic experts labored to enhance the listening experience for sounds emanating from the orchestra pit or the stage rimmed in inset light, the band room and vocal music room do not promise perfect pitch by design.
Crandall nicknamed the musical instrument storage room "the kennel" because the storage bins look like stacks of pet carrying cases.