BOND VOTE TARGETS SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION; TEACHING CLUSTERS TO BE ADDED

Cape Girardeau's proposed new schools would provide for interdisciplinary teaching in classroom clusters, have built-in earthquake protection, be accessible to the handicapped, and assure separation of sixth-graders from older children in the middle school.

Voter approval of a $25 million bond issue and a hike in the building fund levy would finance both construction and major renovations in the Cape Girardeau School District.

School off~icials say such building construction is long overdue.

"We haven't built anything here in about 26 years," said Superintendent Neyland Clark. The district's newest school is the Vocational-Technical School, built in 1967.

Some say that if Ben Franklin were alive today "the only thing he would be able to recognize in our society is our American public schools," said Clark. "There may be some truth to that."

Clark said the April 6 election involves "brick-and-mortar" issues. None of the funding package would go toward salaries, he pointed out.

The bond issue would end up costing the district $43.1 million if paid off over 20 years, school officials say.

It would finance construction of a $4.2 million elementary school and a $12.2 million middle school on 55 acres of district-owned property on the northern corners of Sprigg and Bertling streets. The elementary school would be built on the east side of Sprigg, while the middle school would be situated on the west side.

Construction of the new schools coincides with the city's plan to extend Sprigg Street from where it currently ends at Bertling. Both schools would be air conditioned.

School officials say that if the two funding measures are approved, all of the district's buildings would be air conditioned except for May Greene and Washington elementary schools and the seventh-grade-only L.J. Schultz School.

The district plans to close the three nearly-80-year-old schools. Schultz might ultimately be used as an alternative high school, but Clark said that would depend on obtaining complete federal or state funding for such a venture.

Clark said air-conditioned schools are a necessity, not a luxury. Only Franklin Elementary School and parts of the junior high and high schools are air conditioned.

Hot classrooms make for a poor learning environment, Clark said. "We have a much higher staff fatigue. We also have much higher student fatigue. We have more discipline problems. We have more tardiness.

"When you talk about tardiness and discipline problems, you're talking about disruptions in the education process," the superintendent said.

"I know one businessman who said that every business ought to turn off their air conditioners and feel the kind of environment that students and teachers live in," he said.

The bond issue would also fund installation of air conditioning and the building of an addition to Jefferson Elementary School that would provide 12 additional classrooms and an early childhood center. Work would also be done to make the school more earthquake resistant.

The improvements would enable the school's enrollment to increase to 500, officials say. Currently, Jefferson has an enrollment of 340. But in order to accommodate such an enrollment, the school makes use of two trailers as classrooms, school officials point out.

The addition would eliminate the need for the trailers, officials say.

It's estimated that construction of the addition and installation of air conditioning at the 36-year-old school would cost $1.9 million.

The bond issue also includes $350,000 for limited remodeling of the teacher preparation center at Central High School, more than $1.3 million for site preparation work for the building projects, $1.77 million for furniture and equipment, and nearly $1.4 million in architectural and engineering fees.

Larry Dew, the district's business manager, said the project at the high school involves computerizing the teacher preparation center.

The school district's building projects are expected to create more than 700 private-sector jobs in construction and a variety of services that support those workers over the next several years, Dew said.

The middle school would house Cape Girardeau's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

The two-level building is designed to accommodate 1,200 students, with 400 students in 16 classrooms in each grade. The building would have 163,000 square feet of instructional space, with a total of 48 classrooms.

"The building design was based on having a cluster, a little community of classrooms for each grade," said project architect Julius Jura'csik, a partner in Christner Partnership Inc. of St. Louis.

He said the middle school would be built on a sloping site. The sixth grade would be on the lower level, and have its own entrance and exit.

Seventh- and eighth-grade students would be housed on the upper level, but the two grades would have completely separate instructional areas, Dew said.

The building would include labs for such things as art and technology education.

The design of the 60,000-square-foot, one-story elementary school follows the "classroom cluster" concept, which groups three rooms of the same grade, promoting easier team teaching, school officials say. All the clusters would have direct access to the outside and the instructional materials center. Skylights would be put in the cluster areas.

Both schools are designed to separate the bus drop-off zone from vehicular traffic. Both schools would have computer rooms and the capacity for interactive television, the architects point out.

Plans call for the buildings to be completed and in use by the fall of 1995.

Thursday: The series looks at how the funding measures would impact taxpayers, especially homeowners, and some reasons for and against voting the measures in.

Corrections

The Cape Girardeau Public Schools assessed valuation was incorrectly reported in Tuesday's edition. The correct figure is $257 million.

The proposed middle school to be built with part of the $25 million bond issue would educate grades 6-8.