The Traveler

Issue date: 4/29/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Larry Ash The Fayetteville School District will begin construction on a new high school during the 2010-11 school year. The school district hopes for minimal distractions for students and minimal traffic jams during construction.

Fayetteville Public School District officials recently decided to start building a new high school on the same site as the existing facilities. While learning in the middle of a construction zone might sound like a challenge, most members of the school board, the design team and parent and teacher organizations are confident that an effective learning environment can be maintained.

The school district's first choice was to sell the 40-acre high school campus and build a school at a new location. When the UA, its most likely buyer, did not snatch up the property, the district decided it would have to build new facilities at the current location.

The distractions and inconveniences caused by construction were mentioned in favor of buying property for a new location for the high school, but because the decision to keep the existing property was made, this has not been a source of much concern. Many have said that plans to minimize distractions will be enough, but some are not quite that confident.

Tim Hudson, vice president of the school board, said on-site construction happens all the time and was more concerned with the challenge of reworking an existing site than with the possible distractions for students.

"Sure, there are disruptions," he said, "but it will be staged in a way that the noisiest phases will take place when students aren't there," such as during the summers.

Dan Marzoni, the president of the Arkansas Education Association, said the construction had the potential to make a significant difference for the classroom and that plans to prevent a negative effect were essential to the building plan.

"If there is building and education going on at the same time at the same place, it is going to be very difficult. They should have a plan to move people around to reduce a difficult learning environment," he said.

"We don't have the luxury of pulling 2,000 students off campus and putting them somewhere else," Hudson said. "We will have to face the challenge of reworking that site while we are still educating there."

Continued...

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