Tristen Gibson never expected the gift he’d get for his final year of high school was sharing a building with his younger siblings Lilly and Grason-David, who are in Grade 8 and senior kindergarten, respectively.
You can’t blame him for feeling his style will be just a little bit cramped walking his siblings home from the new W.F. Herman Academy, a JK-to-Grade 12 school.
“Whoopee, I get to walk them to the same school I go to now,” joked Gibson, citing visions of his sister popping up while he’s hanging with his friends.
“I don’t think Lilly is too hot about the idea either,” he added. “She tells me she sees enough of me at home already.”
The unusual arrangement is a result of Greater Essex County District School Board making the former Herman secondary school only the third high school in Ontario to have an entire elementary school (Percy P. McCallum) moved onto the premises.
The 450-student French immersion elementary school seemed a natural fit with the board’s designated French-immersion secondary school in east Windsor and helped solve Herman’s under-population problem.
Combined with the 800 high school students enrolled this fall, the board’s second JK-to-Grade 12 institution will be just shy of the building’s capacity of 1,300 students.
Predictably the fit didn’t seem so natural to some parents.
“I have mixed feelings about it,” said the trio’s mother December Gibson. “I feel like we’re a little bit like guinea pigs testing it out.
“Mixing the high school life with the grade school life, kids grow up so fast as it is now.”
Gibson admits she does see some upsides to the amalgamation.
“In some ways, I’m excited to see how it works out,” Gibson said. “There are some good programs there. I’m open-minded, so let’s see where this goes this year.”
W.F. Herman Academy Grade 9 students head toward orientation at the combined secondary and elementary school Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.
Moving to the Herman site has added a few more anxious moments to the first day of school for Lilly Gibson.
“Will it feel like a grade school or a high school?” Lilly Gibson wonders. “I expect to get lost.
“I’ve talked with my friends and we’re all a little anxious, but next year when we go to high school and everyone else is nervous, we won’t be.”
Principal Paul Schaffner, who moved over with the McCallum student body and staff, said every effort has been made to keep all informed and tours of the new facilities were also being conducted before Labour Day.
“We know there’ll be a few bumps, but we’ll live it and adjust,” Schaffner said.
The most common question Schaffner has fielded regards how much contact the youngsters will have with their more worldly high school peers.
The answer is not much unless it’s by design.
Hallways have been sealed off with teachers requiring swipe cards to leave one school and enter the other.
There are separate outdoor spaces on opposite sides of the building along with separate front entrances, bus bays and parking lots.
W.F. Herman Academy principals Josh Canty and Paul Schaffner, right, walk past a worker near the new gymnasium at the combined secondary and elementary school Wednesday Aug. 31, 2016.
The only time the youngsters will enter the secondary school is when they’re escorted to access a new gym that’s been built over the former Herman swimming pool. The gym will be completed by mid-October.
The school days also start and end at different times keeping students apart.
While the aim has been to maintain physical separation, the goal is to create a sense of one school.
A new school logo has been created to work in the McCallum cougar alongside the Herman Green Griffin. The school teams will share the Griffin nickname and colours.
The efforts to promote academic contact between schools starts with the fact the $11-million renovation of the school created a common staff room.
“We know when teachers get together, they exchange ideas and that only benefits the students,” said Josh Canty, principal of the Herman secondary school.
“It also gives them a chance to get to know each other.”
Canty added having the youngsters on site provides leadership, mentoring and tutoring opportunities for secondary schools.
“One thing I know about our students is they rise to the opportunity of working with young kids,” said Canty, who said the amalgamation kept the high school from being closed.
“It brings out the best in them.”
W.F. Herman Academy principals Paul Schaffner, left, and Josh Canty get a sneak preview of the new gymnasium to be shared by both secondary and elementary students at the combined school on Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.
Schaffner sought out the advice of principals at one of the two schools that went through a similar consolidation and at Tecumseh Vista, which was designed as a JK-to-Grade 12 institution.
“The concept has worked wonderfully for them,” he said. “I think parents will like their child being at one site for 14 years.”
At Herman, the elementary students will have the benefit of accessing superior facilities and programs.
The school boasts an acclaimed music and arts program, has arguably the best tech wing in the public system and is home to the board’s original Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program.
The whirlwind pace of the change will make the first day of school unlike any other for Grade 1 teacher Alissa Hearn.
“The biggest challenge has been packing up 18 years of my junk at McCallum,” Hearn joked.
“We’ve been dealing with the emotion of McCallum closing up until now, but I’m anxious to see how this works.
“It was sad leaving something we all loved, but I’m confident we’ll settle in and love this place, too.”
