MAGNOLIA SCHOOL MODERNIZATION: A FUTURE OF NEW POSSIBILITIES
Magnolia Elementary students came back to school in August 2021 to experience a beautifully re-envisioned and inviting school. They were able to climb on colorful new play structures and run around on a new playground at recess. The beautifully redesigned Multi-Purpose Room has an added “Annex,” or community classroom, which provides much-needed overflow space. A modern new kitchen and lunch tables have been relocated to an area conveniently near the playgrounds.
Students can connect with their creativity in a new Innovation (STEAM) Lab, refreshed and refurbished, to design and build with a multitude of materials and tools.
Magnolia School was built for a very different time. When it opened in the 1950s, its students sat in straight rows of desks and teachers wrote with chalk on blackboards. From the 1950s to the 2020s, it grew to become a treasured neighborhood school, valued for its historic significance and its ties to the community. Some currently attending students are second and even third-generation Magnolia students. This renovation project demonstrates that a school can be modernized into a remarkably new, functional campus while using the same space and maintaining its history and nostalgia.
Last year was a time of adaptation for the Magnolia community. As with all of our schools, the instructional program changed from virtual classes to a hybrid format, and then returned to a regular five days per week schedule --with masks, social distancing, small cohorts, and other mitigation measures. At Magnolia, teachers and students were also learning to live with the noise, dust, temporary fencing, and the inconvenience of construction.
“Now those days are behind us,” said principal Aaron Nelson. “We have come out the other side. Our teachers and students arrived on campus with palpable new enthusiasm, and checked out the new spaces with a sense of new possibilities.”
Magnolia’s 500 students are now learning in spaces that have been redesigned for collaboration and current technologies. Parents are thrilled to know that their children attend an updated, safe, and healthy environment.
“We know that we are at the beginning of something new here at Magnolia,” said Nelson. “This amazing facility will affect our mindset about teaching and learning as we go forward. It is still the same historic school, but now it is built for the future evolving world.”
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