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, five teachers discuss how the STEAM Wing will enhance student learning by promoting collaboration across subject areas.
To view a video of the teachers, click here.
“We teach a lot of life skills, but we also teach how to use what they learn and apply it in many ways,” Business Education Teacher Jesse Fenn said. “The things you will use later in life, to work on your house or apartment or car.”
“Having a STEAM Wing will offer students lots of different opportunities: Robotics, building arts, visual arts, and the culinary program,” Science Teacher Peter Hattan said.
STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Applied Arts, and Mathematics – is designed to encourage dialogue, critical thinking, and student inquiry, and expose students to a range of topics and experiences.
Music Teacher Sean Anderson added: “This expansion isn’t just about music. This is a project that can benefit the whole school population, whether it’s culinary arts, industrial arts, computers, wood shop. This is an expansion that literally benefits every single student who walks through these doors.”
Kearsarge Regional High School opened in 1970, and is not designed to provide a multi-disciplinary 21st century education, or allow students work collaboratively and across disciplines.
“We’re excited about the idea and possibility of engaging our learners in ways that we’ve been trying to make happen in classroom spaces,” Theater Arts-Drama Director Scott Sweatt said. “With this renovation and addition, we can only increase the flow and ease of these intersection in these subjects.”
Music Teacher Rob Harrington: “Kids deserve these spaces and these opportunities, and as many wonderful experiences as they can have in their four years.”
Superintendent Feneberg adds that the new STEAM Wing will fit in with the District’s educational vision and strategic plan, and help meet the goals of providing project-based and competency-based learning.
About the STEAM Wing project
Voters is 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.
