Academics

The agriscience program provides students the opportunity to explore careers in Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources, a key contributor to the economy in our region. As a signature program for the district, upgrades to three greenhouses will maintain and improve the district’s award-winning Agriscience program.  Regrouping agriscience classrooms, which are currently co-located, will facilitate teacher collaboration and access to shared resources. Updating and remodeling these classrooms will improve lighting, flooring, water, gas, and electric needs. Increased productivity through efficiency of the greenhouses is anticipated to lead to increased revenue.

Northern Burlington is very fortunate to provide our students with standard scale tools and project materials as opposed to small scale prototypes.  The existing building entrances (doors) pose limitations when moving finished products.  In addition to updates to improve lighting and flooring, and providing dedicated instructional spaces and student work spaces, larger entrances will alleviate project transportation challenges.

By placing the Counseling Office in the front of the building it will make it more accessible to students, parents and other visitors throughout the school year. This will facilitate parent meetings and create additional visibility to students as well as college and post-secondary visitors.  The Counseling Office presently houses seven counselors, the high school registrar office, two secretaries, the Director of Student Services and two academic directors.  The redesign will provide office space for our Military Family Life Counselor (MFLAC) as well as the Student Assistance Counselor (SAC).

The current conference room space is not large enough for counselors to hold confidential small group meetings with students and/or participate in department meetings and often times the meetings have to be relocated. Additionally, the walls in the counseling office are extremely thin and do not allow for much confidentiality when meeting with students. Having a new Counseling Department space will allow for more frequent individual and small group meetings with students and allow the counseling team to work more effectively and efficiently.

Reconfigured learning spaces for science will support student collaboration and project based work.  The Next Generation Science Standards have shifted science instruction to integrate engineering design practices.  This requires larger spaces for design and experimentation. Science teachers presently use all available spaces, including the hallways and outdoors, to “experience” science.  Currently science classrooms are divided between instructional spaces in the center of the room and lab stations for collaboration around the perimeter.  Re-configuring these spaces changes the focus from dividing these experiences to blending the experiences as the standards require.  In addition to the instructional benefits, this project provides much needed general updates to electricity, gas, plumbing and lighting.

Expanding and centrally locating the media center will improve access and collaboration using varied multi-media resources.  Our media center program is integral to the school’s technology plan, and provides a place for staff and students to learn information skills needed for a lifetime of success.  The media center also supports a variety of self-directed learning styles and interests by providing makerspace resources, and a new space would allow expansion of those programs.

Makerspaces, sometimes called Hackerspaces, can be any area where people gather to make and create. In these spaces, people share supplies, skills, and ideas, and often work together on projects. Many libraries have found that maker culture and Makerspaces fit naturally with their existing missions, and have begun to incorporate Makerspaces into the services they offer their communities. Maker spaces support learning in an informal environment, cultivate an interest in science and technology, foster play and exploration, nurture peer-to-peer learning, and develop a culture of creating as opposed to consuming.

The Visual and Performing Arts classrooms are presently in four different wings of our buildings.  Relocating the theater arts and choral classrooms will provide closer proximity to their performance areas, while regrouping the arts classrooms will provide access to shared resources.  Regaining practice rooms for theater will facilitate multiple components of performance preparation.