As Stephanie Bednaz’s seventh-grade art class dribbled into her classroom, grabbing pencils to begin their warm-up sketches, she polled them: “What do you guys think of the noise out there?”
Outside her classroom windows, construction equipment crisscrossed a field of dirt. Construction of a new middle school began not long before school let out in the spring. A few days into the fall school year, it was in full swing.
“It’s horrible,” piped Alessandra Sallese. She doesn’t like how it shakes the room, she explained.
From across the room, Gavin Griswold didn’t even look up from his sketching to say, “I don’t really care.” He hears the machine sounds, he added, but they don’t really bother him.
“It is incredibly noisy; sometimes the room vibrates,” Bednaz said. “But it is what it is — This is middle school. These guys adapt.”
Back when there was a debate about whether to build the new middle school beside the current one, critics worried that a two-year construction period would disrupt learning. Supporters argued that it would be exciting for kids to watch a new school being built day by day. In some ways both, and in some ways neither, predictions are playing out according to administrators, teachers and students.
The construction sounds bother some students more than others, and they’re felt only in some parts of the school. Some students are intrigued by the construction around them, teachers said. Others are disappointed that they won’t get to attend the new building. Many seem unfazed by it all.
In parts of the school closest to construction – eighth-grade science wings and the art rooms – it has been loud. When machinery drills and fills deep holes in the ground to reinforce the soil, parts of the building shake. Teachers, however, said it seems to disrupt them more than it does their students.
“They’ll sometimes look out there, but honestly, it’s less distracting than when we used to have recess there,” said science teacher Sarah Grant. The noise, she added, comes and goes. On noisy days, “I just talk louder.”
Grant said that the construction is harder on teachers. Students get to rotate throughout the day to other, quieter parts of the building. Teachers, who largely stay near their classrooms, don’t get the reprieve, and on noisier days, she said she’s gone home with a headache.
This fall, when the most intense groundwork is done, will be the loudest period of construction, district Facilities Director Matt Cashman told the school board at a recent meeting. Members were worried, wondering if the school would need to invest in earplugs.
Once the geothermal wells are dug, the foundation is poured and the building’s steel frame starts going up in the coming months, the clamor will decline, Cashman said. He also noted that the district has sound and vibration monitors on-site.
Principal Jay Richard assured the school board that he was making mitigation plans around key times of year, like state testing, but that students had not reported the noise being a roadblock to learning. Richard also held assemblies with each grade individually to answer questions about the project during the first week of school.
“They’re resilient, they really are,” he said.
Brian Huckins teaches engineering and design across the hall from Bednaz’s art room, meaning his view faces away from construction. Insulated from the action, the main impact he noted was having to keep his windows closed more than he’d like. Moreso, he’s jealous of the art room’s view of construction out the window.
“Just being able to look out and see all the trucks and the machinery. I kind of think it’s exciting to watch,” Huckins said. “I was big into excavators and bulldozers and backhoes and stuff when I was a kid, and part of me wants to have all my students like out there, hand them a shovel, be like, ‘Let’s work on this.'”
By the end of the school year, the new school building will have walls and a roof. Interior construction will continue throughout next year, and students are expected to move into a completed school in the winter of 2028-2029.
Back in Bednaz’s art class, the drawing prompt for the day was to sketch something inspired by the word ‘relic.’
“One of the kids drew Rundlett,” she said.
