The Rock Wall

The ladies at the Clinic know me better than I know myself, which is the way of cats and kids, too. They asked me if I had a photo of our grandson, Van, on my phone.

No, my phone isn’t really good with pictures. They insisted, so I looked. Sure enough there was a photo of Van in his bassinet with a message on the a big sheet of turquoise paper – Happy Birthday, Grandpa. Now how could I forget that?

– I had never given a lot of thought to Dr. Christian’s monthly report on APR – Annual Performance Review, but something she said at the Dec. 14 board meeting caught my attention. I decided to follow up with her. Glad I did. It is a big deal for the district.

Dr. Christian really burned the midnight oil to get the story in this paper for you. Story on Page 1. We are fortunate to have a good score. Read the article and you’ll see why.

– I had not gotten much into the details on the new addition to the school. Then I heard through the grapevine that a board member was not happy with the “hole.”  I asked some of the school staff if the new gym would be on level with the current gym. Nobody knew.

So I asked Supt. Mark Koca who stays up to the minute on the new construction. He told me the new gym and the current gym have never been on the same level in the plans. The new gym is down at street level. The top of its bleachers will be at the same level as the main floor in the current gym.

“When you walk in the new entrance, you will be at the same level as the main floor. You will walk in at the top of the bleachers and go down instead of walking in on the floor and going up. That’s going to reduce traffic on our gym floor.”

I told Mark I don’t think people come to watch the game. I think they come to visit the concession stand.

He said, “This way they won’t have to get down in front of the players and the crowd to exit the gym and go to the concession stand and restrooms. They will be going up away from play instead of into play. I think it is a much better arrangement for us from the standpoint of usability.”

Q. On what level will the classrooms be?

“There will be two levels actually. The new locker rooms and the weight room will be down at the lower gym level or street level. The band room and the choir room will actually be on the main floor level which means we are not going to have to take music equipment up and down stairs every time we have a concert or anything in the Upper Gym.”

He said they are going to start calling them the Upper Gym, which is the current new gym, and the Lower Gym. which will be the new gym.         KL