CARIBOU, Maine — When the chance to build a new school only comes around every 100 years or so it’s best to do some creative brainstorming when the opportunity arises.
Over 50 students, teachers, school board members, administrators and members of the community joined forces at Caribou Middle School on Saturday for the RSU 39 “Building Our Future” Café. It was a day-long opportunity to spur up some fun and innovative ideas for their pending state-funded Capital Improvement Project.
“Building a school is very specific,” Superintendent Susan White said. “We want to build something that will serve generations.”
The district has been asked to make an effort to involve the community and make them an integral part of the planning process. Saturday’s café was RSU 39’s first crack at getting the help they need to fill out their education specification guidelines in order to move the multi-step process further along.
“You couldn’t have asked for a better outcome,” Assistant Superintendent Lois Brewer said. “People had fantastic ideas. Some of the best thinking came from middle-schoolers.”
The day consisted of round after round of shooting ideas back and forth and comparing notes between community members. A common thread on almost all of their notepads was the word “flexibility.” Not just a flexible building for future technology, but a facility that can accommodate the future of proficiency-based learning. A future where students will work at their own learning level in various group sizes.
“The school should be a safe space and should provide the max opportunity to learn,” founding partner of PDT Architects Lyndon Keck said. Keck along with his team at PDT have contracted with RSU 39 and will be spearheading the task of building Caribou’s new school.
Both White and Keck agree that consolidating Hilltop Elementary, Teague Park and Caribou Middle schools is the path they’d like to take, “The potential consolidation of the schools will lower operational costs and staff costs,” Keck said.
Behind the project is a building committee made up of administration and local business people. According to White, the entire committee is on board with the idea of consolidation. But as Saturday’s café progressed there were mixed opinions on whether or not there should be any consolidation at all and instead find a way to use the state’s money to rehabilitate the three aging schools and forego the loss of any future jobs.
Based on Saturday’s turnout the public can look forward to similar events being held in the community. White said the district is taking cues from PDT on future informational meetings.
