New temporary classrooms at Riverview Elementary School. (Photo by Larry Austin)
After two weeks of the school year, the temporary classrooms at the Tonawanda City School District's elementary schools have received a thumbs up from school board members and students.
At Tuesday's Tonawanda City School District Board of Education meeting, held in the Tonawanda High School Library and Media Center,
trustees reported on a recent tour they took of Riverview Elementary, where they came away impressed with the temporary classrooms that were built there over the summer while Fletcher Elementary School undergoes a renovation as part of the Tona2020 capital project.
Board of Education members Kristin Schmutzler and Alicia O'Donnell spoke at the end of Tuesday's BOE meeting and reported that the new rooms are cool in both climate and vibe.
Schmutzler said the rooms have "literally everything in there" and lack neither the learning tools of the other classrooms in the complex nor the positive atmosphere.
"The teachers did a great job of making them 'home,'" Schmutzler said.
"Right now, it's the 'it' room to be in, so it is definitely not less by any means. It's the cool room," she added.
O'Donnell said that before the construction for the Tona2020 capital project, the elementary schools taught up to third grade, and students would move to Fletcher Elementary School for fourth and fifth grades. Students who were in third grade last year at Riverview and Mullen have stayed there this year for fourth grade in the new classrooms. All students K-5 will come together in September 2023 under one roof at a new Fletcher Elementary School.
Meanwhile, the students think "it's cool, because the fourth-graders are the big kids on campus. They have sort of this whole separate wing," O'Donnell said.
The classrooms received thumbs up from two trusted reviewers, the children of the trustees.
"Yeah, my son loves it," O'Donnell said. "They're very bright, they're brand new, they're nice and clean, and there's a lot of nice sun coming in."
"Next year, he'll be in fourth grade," Schmutzler said of her son, a student at Riverview, "and he's hoping that the fourth-graders are still there. He's hoping to get one of those rooms next year."
O'Donnell said taking a tour of the rooms and having a child in the school gives her a special insight into this aspect of Tona2020, a capital project that was approved by voters in October of 2019.
"It's nice because I can speak to that since he's in the classroom, but also just seeing it with my own eyes. As a student, I was in a temporary classroom when I was in high school, and it was fine. Once you're in there, it feels just like a classroom," she said.
The next meeting of the TCSD Board of Education is at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 12, in the Tonawanda High School Library Media Center.
Above and below, inside a new temporary classroom at Mullen Elementary School.
Photos by Larry Austin.
