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The ground floor of the school |
Students returning to Brent Elementary School for the new school year may have a tough time recognizing their school.
Brent is the focus of a summer-long remodeling project that will renovate and modernize the classrooms and other areas of the school and also add additional space to accommodate a growing school. The $2.7 million project will allow Brent to expand to two classrooms per grade by moving the ground floor exterior wall out by 9 feet on some sides of the school and moving the school administration to a new addition built in the courtyard outside the existing entrance.
Brent PTA President Daniel Holt said the changes at Brent will help the school continue to become a better place for children to learn.
“It continues us and actually enhances the arc that we’re on,” he said.
Holt has three children who will attend Brent next year and said one of the most important aspects of the renovations is that the school will have the number of classes it needs to educate children the whole way through grade school. Last year, the school only had one class for every grade except for kindergarten.
“It means that my second-grader will still attend Brent in fifth grade because we have the space,” he said.
When Holt’s second-grade daughter first attended Brent, the school had about 200 students. On Aug. 24, about 275 students will walk through the doors, and Holt said that number will keep going up for a while.
“It’s clear that our growth pattern is significantly above the rest of the District, both charter and public schools,” he said. “We’re very confident about where we are at right now. We have a first-class school.”
The Bells and Whistles
The ongoing renovations feature a number of seemingly small changes that will have a big impact on the day-to-day lives of Brent’s students. By adding four new classrooms on the ground floor, the 3-year-old, 4-year-old and kindergarten classes will all be on the same floor. This will allow the smallest students to not have to go up and down stairs numerous times a day.
On a similar note, the music room will be moved from the third floor to the second floor to more centrally locate the room for all students.
Each of those ground-floor classrooms will also have its own restroom, water fountain and storage area so their teacher can always supervise the children.
On the second and third-floors, where the first- through fifth-grade classrooms will be located, the bulletin boards will be moved down to match the eye-level of students.
Former Brent PTA President Denise Diggs, who has also been involved in the planning process for the renovation, said all the new classroom space is needed for a school on Capitol Hill.
“Our homes are kind of small to begin with, and we don’t want to have small classrooms,” she said.
In addition, all the classrooms will receive a mix of the latest technology and some common-sense upgrades to improve the education experience. For example, the classrooms will be installed with “enhanced audio” – basically the teachers will wear a microphone and speakers in the ceiling will help students hear well.
On the old-fashioned end of the sound improvement spectrum, holes in some of the walls shared by classrooms will be plugged and partition walls are being replaced by permanent walls. These holes were used to hold storage units when the school opened in 1968, but eventually the storage units were removed and blackboards were placed over the holes to cover them up. Not too surprisingly, the blackboard-covered holes and the partition walls allowed a lot of sound to travel from class to class.
To mirror the changes inside the school, Brent will also receive playground equipment this summer and a new walkway entrance will be built.
The initial phase of a rain garden, a garden running along the perimeter of the site to capture and drain rainwater before it runs into the storm sewers, will also be wrapped up this summer. The final completion of the garden and other steps to complete the “greening” of Brent’s site probably won’t be finished until later, Holt said.
More Changes to Come
The renovations at Brent are only in the first phase. Eventually, more of the common areas of the school will be updated. The windows will also be replaced, maybe as soon as next summer.
Holt said the dramatic change to the school’s interior will continue a trend in Brent’s student body makeup. When Brent first opened, many of the students were from Capitol Hill families. Gradually, the majority of the students came from elsewhere, but that trend has been reversing in recent years.
“And that will keep changing … we now have the capacity to fill Brent entirely with children from the neighborhood,” Holt said. “Brent is becoming a neighborhood school again. It’s returning to its roots in some way.” |
