NEW LONDON, N.H. — To provide residents with vital information about the Kearsarge Regional High School building project, Superintendent Winfried Feneberg and the Kearsarge Regional School District will share the details through the District’s spotlight series.
Each week, SAU 65 will delve into topics surrounding the proposed construction and renovation of the High School STEAM Wing. In this feature story, Superintendent Feneberg and Assistant Superintendent Michael Bessette provide an overview of the reasons the District pursued the project.
Superintendent Feneberg and Assistant Superintendent Bessette discuss the project further in this video.
Superintendent Feneberg notes that the High School opened in 1970 with the then-popular “open concept,” and later was renovated into more traditional classrooms. Many of these spaces do not provide the flexibility for students to work collaboratively and across disciplines.
“The questions we asked are: How can we prepare our students for the workforce or post-secondary education? How do we give them opportunities so that they stand out against students in other districts once they graduate?” Superintendent Feneberg says. “We want every student to be able to explore a number of pathways and discover a career or lifelong interest.”
Assistant Superintendent Bessette states that the High School is much like an “egg crate” with inflexible, similar-sized classrooms. “We need a space that would be flexible, dynamic, to literally move furniture and present to larger or smaller groups on demand,” he says.
Assistant Superintendent Bessette adds that secondary education has evolved and expanded since the High School first opened.
“The reality is that there were fewer programs then. We now have a more robust curricula, we have different needs for programs, more specialized programs,” Assistant Superintendent Bessette states. “We need more space.”
Superintendent Feneberg states that the District has seen a sharp increase in interest in a number of career pathways, such as in the arts and Culinary programs. “We have a huge demand that we can’t meet,” he says.
About the STEAM Wing project
Voters in all seven Kearsarge sending communities — Bradford, Newbury, New London, Sutton, Springfield, Warner, and Wilmot — will be asked to approve the building project in March.
The proposed renovation and construction project will update parts of original classroom spaces, which are now more than 50 years old, to make them suitable for career technical education, robotics, and applied arts uses.
Additionally, the new construction would support learning and career pathways in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, applied arts and mathematics) fields, create physical learning spaces for 21st-century education and expand skills development for students not electing to pursue post-secondary degrees. A new green room for the school’s television and media programs would also be included.
The proposed new construction at the high school would include creating a new robotics lab, storage and classroom space, an expanded culinary learning space, modern manufacturing education options, updated spaces for the theater program and additional art classroom space — among other upgrades.
The renovation would focus on reconfiguring and updating the existing library space, creating cross-discipline project-based learning opportunities, updating locker rooms, upgrading mechanical systems, and replacing the roof and rearranging existing facilities to improve working and learning conditions.
The project would cost $22,270,000 and would be funded via a 20-year bond.
Taxpayers in all seven Kearsarge communities will share the cost.
For more information about the project, click here.
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