Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
STUDENTS AND teachers in Ironwood's Great Start Readiness Program stand in front of the George N. Sleight School last Friday on the last day of classes there before the program moved to the Luther L. Wright K-12 School. Those commemorating the last day included, first row: Ivy Bromley, Kadey Gallo, Buliwyf Anderson, Lily Statman, Oscar Golebiowski, William Stanke, Brycen Ruppel, Leyna Gerlach, Audrina Watkins and Josslynn Schwartz; second row: Kanon Blaszak, Wyatt Choronzy, Elizabeth Ross, Sydney Kolesar, Evelynn Hembree, Bentley Luedtke, Sommer Casey, Charlotte Spaniel and Gianna Richards; third row: Natalie Sackman, Easton Oja, Tyson Madison, Connor Kauppi, Carter Kennedy, Maggie Kusz, Cally Aho, Chase Richards, Nante Niemi and Thurman Baldwin; fourth row: staff members Laura Ahonen, Amy Lahti, Jackie Rowe and Becky Anderson.
By RICHARD JENKINS
Ironwood - The 4-year-olds in Ironwood's Great Start Readiness Program will have a new home next week when they return to classes Monday as the program completes its transition from the George N. Sleight School to Luther L. Wright K-12 School.
"We have green lights from the state, this is a go. Monday is for real," Superintendent Travis Powell said Wednesday. "The children will be dropped off in our bus lane like the rest of our students."
Those parents dropping their students off can park in the school parking lot and take their kids to the building's Pabst Street entrance.
The need to move the program arose in September when electrical issues with Sleight's fire alarm system were discovered. The district had planned to stop using the building at the end of the year due to the cost of other building repairs, but sped up its timeline due to the fire alarm problems.
Policies were put in place to allow GSRP classes to temporarily resume at Sleight to allow the necessary renovations be completed to the wing of Luther L. Wright that formerly housed several Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School District programs and will now be the program's new home.
"We canceled classes Monday and Tuesday of this week to allow the program staff to relocate everything and we had an open house last evening that had really good turnout. All the early indicators are the parents and students are pleased with the new space, and the children are excited to join us on Monday," Powell said.
Powell credited both the GSRP staff and those at Luther L. Wright for helping with the transition from one building to another.
He said the program staff's wealth of experience certainly helped as they knew many of the changes needed to bring the new classrooms into compliance with state regulations.
"Since our staff know all of those things, they're able to implement them all without having someone come in and look over their shoulder," Powell said.
While the move to the new building is a big change for the students in the program, Powell said the rest of the district's students will also experience some changes due to the move. The primary change is the hallway the program is in will no longer be accessible to the rest of the school, which Powell explained was not only due to state security regulations but also because the program will be actively using the hallway space more.
"It's just easier to meet all of those requirements - the security, the ease of access to the program - it's just easier to close that space off," Powell said. "It is going to be an inconvenience, I know there are staff members who have some questions about that, and we're in the process of addressing those."
He said the building's design means the hallway is easy to contain as it doesn't block access to any other parts of the school.
While the transition's timeline may not have been ideal, the GSRP teachers said the change is a positive not only because many parents have older students but also because it should make the transition into kindergarten easier.
"When you talk about transitioning, before it was from the small school to big school," said Jackie Rowe, the program's head teacher. "Now we're all at the big school, so I think the transitioning part will be easier. There can be, there should be, more collaboration with the kindergarten teachers to prepare our kids for that move."
She said the students are excited for the change and will probably handle the move a bit better than some of the adults.
Along with the GSRP program, Sleight housed the district's alternative school and some GOISD programs.
Powell said the alternative school continues to use the Ironwood Memorial Building while the district finds a permanent location for it. The GOISD programs that used both Sleight and the rooms in Luther L. Wright now being used for the GSRP program have been moved to the Bessemer Schools.
