Building a school by consensus

Near North District School Board Trustee Alan Bottomley says the process of building a new school in the south end of the district, while frustrating at times, in all has been fascinating process.

Encouraged by the advancements made, Bottomley sent the following report to BayToday to update folks on where the new Almaguin Secondary School stands.

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I believe that the Near North District School Board has embarked on a most unusual and exciting process to build the new Almaguin Secondary School. After months of frustrating negotiations with the Ministry of Education, approval was given to start the process. The Board had over a dozen architectural firms interested in the job. The Building committee ended up interviewing six of the best applicants and eventually picked a joint venture made up of Larocque Elder architects from North Bay and IBI Group architects from the GTA. On April 27, the Building Committee agreed in principal with the contract and the fun began. The excitement and keen interest of these architects was obvious from the word go.

One of the basic demands of the Board was that the there would be full consultation with the whole Almaguin Community. I mean that the winning architects would have to listen and then design the school according to feed back from the staff, school administration, secretaries, custodians, EA's, students and community groups. The ACCESS 2011 committee spearheaded the community input after polling and gleaning many sources from the community. ( They have a web site which shows much of this ). By May 4, the architects were in the school interviewing staff about their wishes for their particular subject areas. From several days of this process which eventually included students, ACCESS 2011, the OPP, Administration etc the first concept of the building emerged. The team then did a thorough inventory of every room with discussion of what worked and what did not. On May 27 the first draft of the new building was presented to a public meeting and a great deal of discussion went on about how it could be improved. By June 17 the architects were ready to present a more detailed version which had most of the suggestions incorporated. They were really listening! Imagine, building a school by consensus. Again there were improvements suggested but not nearly as many. The architects will now spend time with groups on details.

The new AHSS is a beautiful concept. It is going to enhance the students' opportunities to succeed in their educational goals and allow for a comfortable environment to interact socially. It will be a fully green school and will be community use friendly. It is hard to explain to non residents how important this high school is to the villages and rural citizens of this large Almaguin area. Rural Ontario has not fared well in getting services and amenities that urban people take for granted. This school can give a small increment to improving the quality of life.

The actual construction of the school will start next March with completion for September 2011. Currently, the new location is being prepared. We will hold a big picnic on the Labour Day weekend 2011. Plan to join us in our celebration.

Alan Bottomley