Local & State Headlines

New year, new school

• Lee County’s new Twin Oaks Elementary School opens its doors to students Friday.

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — Built with growth in mind, Lee County’s new Twin Oaks Elementary School expects to fill only 28 of the 44 classrooms that line its color-coded wings, school officials said during a recent tour of the brand-spanking new campus on Old Smithville Road.

Green is for Grade 5, blue is for Grade 4 and red, with three letters, is for the “third herd,” a nickname selected by Twin Oaks’ third-grade teachers, Principal Jason Miller said.

Third-graders will learn more about the “herd” on the first day of school Friday.

Yellow accents highlight Twin Oaks’ cafeteria and media center, which radiate like each classroom wing from a central windowed atrium.

“We just love the colors,” said Sylvia Vann, chair of the Lee County Board of Education. “I think they’re wonderful. And a lot of windows and light. It’s uplifting. I think it has a lot to do with your mood.”

There are many other changes in store as Lee elementary school students move from the former Twin Oaks campus on Leslie Highway, which opened in 1954, to the new 101,000-square-foot school located beside Lee County Middle School on Old Smithville Road.

To begin with, students and parents visiting the school nurse, guidance office or school administrators all will pass through a central waiting area at the front of the school, Miller said.

Retiring personnel have considered staying on after taking a glimpse at the sparkling new kitchen where school meals will be prepared, Kitchen Manager Sheila Hayes said.

“It’s a major improvement. We’re real excited,” Hayes said.

Most Twin Oaks teachers have already moved into their classrooms, taking their post-planning days last week when the school was ready, and third-grade teachers are particularly excited about the teachers’ lounges for each grade, for which Twin Oaks Parent-Teacher Organization has purchased refrigerators and microwaves, Miller said.

Third-grade teachers “didn’t have anything like this,” Miller said. “I don’t even think they had a sink in theirs, it was so small.”

Every classroom is equipped with a projection system, where instructors can display Web sites, videos or other instructional programs, and write from below on a wireless chalkboard system, he said.

“I call it e-instruction. I can write 2-plus-2 with my stylus on a hand held device and it will go to the board,” Miller said. “If we’re studying volcanoes, I can use my equipment to show a volcano.”

Having the projection systems in every classroom is a first for Lee County, and personnel will be going through staff development training to learn to use the technology, he said.

With the capacity for 1,200 students, Twin Oaks expects to enroll about 800 this year after gaining around 45 students over the summer, filling 28 of the school’s 44 classrooms, Miller said.

Art, music, special education and other personnel will bring the number of certified faculty at the school to 41, and its total staff to 72 people, he said.

A true art room, music room, computer and science labs and a gymnasium — equipped for basketball, volleyball and other sports — as well as modern special-education classrooms equipped with time-out rooms join the school’s 16 third-grade, 14 fourth-grade and 14 fifth-grade classrooms, he said.

“They went ahead and planned for growth,” he said.

The only variation in the school’s color scheme is in the gymnasium, which bears Lee County’s school colors of red and black.

A committee of teachers, board members and administrators toured several schools around the state before deciding on the design, which also has been used in Effingham, Cobb and Marietta schools, Assistant Superintendent Gary Kelley said.

The same design, created by Buckley and Associates of Albany, also is being used for a new elementary school being constructed in neighboring Worth County, Kelley said.

That school, located next to Worth County’s middle, primary and high schools in Sylvester, is expected to be complete in December 2009, according to previous Albany Herald reports.

Students and visitors who enter Twin Oaks will notice the columns that decorate the facade of drive-through breezeway at the front of the school.

“To me, it looks like the front entrance to a college, not an elementary school,” Miller said.

The opening of a new school, one of two elementary schools in Lee, has created “a lot of excitement” for personnel, parents and students, but it also offers some challenges, Miller said.

Routines — students’ movements at the start of school, at lunch and at other times that have been the same for decades at the former Twin Oaks will be replaced by all-new patterns, made easier by the new school’s design.

“Logistically, things will be easier,” Miller said. “But it’s also a challenge, because we have to learn all new things.”

Lee’s other elementary school, Lee County Elementary on Firetower Road, is in a building that originally was Lee County High School, but has been completely remodeled, he said.

Built by Kinney Construction, Twin Oaks’ total cost was $14.5 million, including $2.4 million in state funds and $12.1 million from special-purpose, local-option sales tax (SPLOST) funds, Superintendent Larry Walters said.

“All of that building will be paid for in the next 5 years,” Walters said.

The addition of a second school on two-lane Old Smithville Road brings along an additional challenge, Walters said.

“With this school and with the middle school, and with it being the Old Smithville Road that it is, we anticipate some traffic problems,” he said.

Leesburg Police will be directing traffic during the first few days of school, when parents often drive their children to school, he said.

Eighty percent of traffic from both schools is turning left, to drive south, Walters said.

“If they took a right turn coming out of these places, that would help so much,” he said. “They’re eventually going to end up in front of the courthouse.”

The historic former Twin Oaks school is being transformed into the new Lee County High School Ninth Grade Campus, where school also begins Friday.

Open house for parents and elementary students at the new school will be held from 4-5:30 p.m. Thursday.

While everyone is excited about moving to the new building, there is a small sense of loss in leaving the old campus, Miller said.

“There are some things about that school we’ll miss. The campus is real open... when you take a walk outside by the butterfly garden. We’ll have those kind of memories as we settle into this campus.”

The new campus is “a very special place, but it’s the people that make the school, not the building. I think we’ll be able to continue with the tradition of excellence — ‘Bloom where you are planted,’ that’s the way I’d describe it. Good parents and students; that’s what makes this a good school.”

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