BY GINGER KOZLOWSKI
The vision of a common middle school for Candia and Auburn began to come to life as the first drawing of the proposed school’s floor plan was presented to the public on Tuesday, Aug. 14.
The plan shows a school with two floors. The main floor encompasses a high school-sized gymnasium, a separate cafeteria, music and art rooms, industrial arts and computer rooms, a foreign language classroom, administrative offices and special-use rooms, as well as classrooms.
The second floor contains classrooms, the media center, teacher rooms and special education classrooms.
Each of the three grades to be housed in the school are grouped together, so the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders have their own space in the school with a central locker area and meeting space.
“Auburn’s design team presented the plans and explainedwhat the thought processes were and answered questions sabout the design itself,” said Candia School Board member Ingrid Byrd. “But there are still a lot of unanswered querstions in my mind.”
One of those questions is about cost, which was not discussed at the meeting. Dan Bisson, the architect for the project, presented the 100,000-square-foot plan after listening to parents, teachers, students and other concerned about the project, said Elaine Hobbs, Auburn School Board chairman. He came up with draft.
“I like the drawing,” said Hobbs. “I think it meets the needs of both communities, allows for growth. I’m impressed with it.”
Byrd agreed that there were some well-thought-out ideas for how the school was laid out, including security concerns and the ability to expand if necessary. She did, however question the number of classrooms and teacher areas.
“People seem to be pleased with the plan,” said Hobbs. “It’s now a matter of taking information from public, boards, teachers.”
The design firm is now doing test borings of the land and traffic studies, said Hobbs. Such information will contribute to the final cost estimate of building the joint middle school.
Both the Candia and Auburn school boards would like to hear from the public on the plan. On Sept. 6, at 6 p.m., at the Candia Moore School, the tuition agreement will be discussed, but not the building plan. Hobbs said they plan to present their thinking on both the building design and the tuition agreement to the ublic twice, on Sept. 11 and 25. They will take input from the public at both of those meetings.