With the purchase of land across Lake Brandt Drive and on Kello Drive over the past two years, the school has increased its footprint by about 20 acres. These aquisitions, along with the desire to replace the current Middle School building, increase the size of the cafeteria and make other campus improvements call for a complete review of how we currently use our campus and how it might be configured in the future to best meet the needs of our students and curriculum.
We have retained Bill Monroe of WGM Design Inc. located in Charlotte. Bill and his firm have worked with several independent schools, and he has already begun meeting with members of the Board of Trustees, administrators, teachers, parents and alumni of the school to gather their ideas on the future physical needs of our campus. One of the expectations for the new master plan is that it provide us a campus that is itself a learning environment. Many schools and colleges are finding ways to become more ecologically friendly and support a green environment, including the use of catch basins for water, alternative energy sources, native shrubs and plants and recycling.
We would like our curriculum and our practices to be closely tied together. This will provide our students with an immediate laboratory, giving them real life experiences right on their own campus, allowing us to model our commitment to preserving our environment and, very practically, helping us to reduce expenses.
WGM Design will be working closely with our leadership team and me over the next few months to come up with a long range master plan by this summer. As we come to the end of the design process, we will be inviting everyone an opportuntiy for input.
In the meantime, if you have any thoughts about what you would like to see developed on our campus, please don't hesitate to drop me a note.
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I was very pleased to see your mention of creating a "green environment" as one of the criteria for your new Campus Master Plan. I was fascinated by the publicity the new Northern school received recently in terms of its design's ability to reduce energy use and to allow students to actually track how "green" their school and their practices are against other similar schools in the nation. This ability puts learning and responsible living into action - please continue to keep these "green" goals in your considerations, and keep us updated! Amy Wilson
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