Polk County Education
14A Polk County Itemizer-Observer • March 29, 2017
Plan to build FC
gym taking shape
By Jolene Guzman
The Itemizer-Observer
JOLENE GUZMAN/Itemizer-Observer
Perrydale’s kindergarten class listens as students in the high school’s child development class give a presentation.
HANDS-ON TRAINING
Perrydale high school students tackle the job of teaching kinders
By Jolene Guzman
The Itemizer-Observer
PERRYDALE — What
color is Venus?
Perrydale high school sen-
ior Alex Hawes immediately
responded to the question
from a student in the Perry-
dale’s kindergarten class.
“I’ll go get the space book,”
he said, leaving the table
were a small group of young-
sters were busy coloring the
sun and the planets on a strip
of paper to make in to hats.
He returned seconds later
with the book in hand.
“Let’s see if we can find
Venus in here,” he said
thumbing through the
brightly illustrated book
about space and the planets.
“There’s Venus right there, so
it’s kind of yellowish, yellow
and blue.”
Thursday’s space-cen-
tered activity is part of a
project in the high school
child development class, in
which high school students
help in preschool through
second-grade classrooms
and create special project
activities for the young ones.
The class has high-
schoolers spending two
class periods a week assist-
ing in classes, and two peri-
ods learning about early
childhood education.
Teacher Misty Matthews
created the class last year,
using an advantage Perry-
dale has over other schools:
All students, preschool
through 12th grade, are on
one campus.
“It makes sense,” she said.
“It’s teaching them how to
teach little ones.”
Wednesday, the full class
met with the kindergarteners
in the school’s old gym for a
short presentation of songs,
stories and poems about
space and space travel.
Then it was on to activi-
ties, such as the planet hat,
making paper and drinking
straw rockets, and space
Twister.
Hawes said the class re-
minds him of an annual ac-
tivity he used to do when he
was one of the “little ones.”
“I remember when I was a
kid, in the shop program, we
had this thing called boat
building buddies,” he said. “It
was a way for us to interact
with the high-schoolers. I re-
member that was fun, to be
able to hang out with the high-
schoolers and talk to them.”
While Hawes won’t be
going into early childhood
education, he said the class
has taught him the value of a
certain virtue.
“You learn a lot of pa-
tience, you know. It gives
you little flashbacks of when
you were a kid, and so
you’ve got to learn to be pa-
tient with them,” he said.
“With the younger ones, you
have to be more thorough in
your explanations. I think
the main thing you learn is
patience.”
Kindergarten teacher Ja-
neen Thomson said it’s nice
to have more help in the
classroom when the class is
divided into small groups —
which is where the bulk of
the learning takes place.
“Our student-to-teacher
ratio goes way down,” she
said. “We are better able to
meet the needs of kids.”
Thomson said she sees
signs that some of the high
school students would make
good teachers.
“I see that they are en-
lightened to the difference
you can make with chil-
dren,” Thomson said. “The
collaboration between the
high school and the kinder-
garten students, I see it as a
great win-win and a rela-
tionship builder.”
See MENTORS, Page 13A
FALLS CITY — The Falls City School Board is investi-
gating the feasibility of its new plan to build a gym at
Falls City Elementary School without bond funding.
The idea would have much of the building put up
with volunteer labor, led by Bob Young, a board member
and owner of Robert Young Construction.
The board is estimating that it can afford to pay for a
30-year loan to build the gym, which, if built according
to plan, would have the same useful life span as the
Falls City High School gym, built in 1931.
The other option is to build a steel building, which
could be less expensive and easier to put up, but would
have half the lifespan and wouldn’t be easy to add on to,
Young said.
“It’s still in really good shape. Now it’s been kept up,
but there’s really no rot or anything in that,” Young said
about the high school gym. “I don’t think there is any-
way to get a metal building to last that long. The thing
with the stick built is it will last longer, be a better build-
ing.”
Debbie Pavon, the district’s business manager, pro-
vided the board with estimates on loans on a variety of
amounts and durations, all at 5.25 percent interest, at
its meeting on March 21.
A $300,000 loan would cost $19,879 per year at 30
years; a $350,000 loan would cost $23,192 at 30 years;
and a $400,000 loan would cost $26,505 a year at 30
years.
Superintendent Jack Thompson said his concern with
taking out a loan is the prospect of losing the district’s
local option levy, which helps pay for school programs.
“The looming unknown out there is our local option.
We’ve got two more years on the local option,” Thomp-
son said. “I wasn’t scared about that before, but now
that we’ve had two (gym) bonds fail … that’s a fear.
That’s a substantial amount of money. You are talking
$100,000.”
He added that with careful budgeting, the district still
might be able to pull it off.
“If you kept is under $40,000 per year, you could
probably make work,” he said.
Young said he doesn’t believe the district has a choice
with the possibility of growth and eventually more man-
dated physical education minutes.
There may be another hurdle for the district’s plan.
The board asked Pavon and Thompson to investigate
restrictions on submitting a bid for the project without
labor costs — because of the plan to build the gym with
volunteers. The exception to that are parts of the project
that would require the expertise of subcontractors,
Young said.
Board Chairwoman Jami Kidd said the Willamina
School District built a facility in a similar manner re-
cently, and they could start with contacting officials
there.
“We need to find out if there are rules that dictate
how we can do that,” Young said. “I’m afraid there’s
going to be a problem somewhere.”