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Students, parents get look at new Olson Elementary School

Tamira Madsen  —  8/30/2008 3:01 pm

Sidney Helle escorted little sister Lydia through the hallways of Paul J. Olson Elementary School in search of Lydia's classroom and locker.

Lydia tentatively glanced in teacher Libby Mackman's kindergarten classroom -- where she will begin class Sept. 2 -- but beckoned big sister back to the task of locating her locker.

Three children from the Helle family are members of the student body at the new Olson Elementary School, which serves K-5 students and is located on 801 Redan Drive in the Linden Park neighborhood on the city's far west side. Many students and parents got their first extended tours of Olson Thursday and were thrilled to see the sparkling new classrooms, computer equipment, furniture, books and supplies.

Sidney, who attended Chavez Elementary from kindergarten through fourth grade, had the option of staying put or transferring to Olson. She decided to make the move to Olson along with sister Lydia and brother Jack, who will be in second grade.

Sidney said she was a bit torn over the decision, but is looking forward to starting classes.

"It's hard but not so hard, but I mainly came for my sister and brother," Sidney said. "I like new books and new desks and new teachers and I get to meet and make a lot more new friends. Yes, because I was there for a long time."

The 88,000-square foot, $13 million school was completed earlier this week and has a geothermal heating/cooling system, day lighting windows and solar panel roofing. Olson is one of the first schools in the state to be constructed to strict environmental guidelines, also known as LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) specifications. The school was named for Paul J. Olson, a native of Mount Horeb and University of Wisconsin graduate who was a devoted conservationist and highly respected science teacher and 23-year principal at Midvale Elementary School.

It's those green aspects that many Olson parents and teachers find appealing, including Kimi Ishikawa, an English as a second language teacher in a fourth- and fifth-grade classroom.

Ishikawa taught at Chavez for five years and helped build a rain garden at the school. She said encouraging children to respect and take care of the environment is important for the faculty, which organized a green team over the summer. Several initiatives the team plans to incorporate are carpooling and developing a prairie.

"Environmental issues are really important to me," Ishikawa said. "I think it will be very exciting starting a new culture at a new school and building a new community, and hopefully, building it around some of those environmental mind-sets. I was involved in putting in a rain garden at Chavez and a bunch of us at Chavez took a prairie restoration class.

"If you look at the land that we're on here, I think we have a lot of opportunities to do prairie restoration or other environmental issues."

Mary Reid, a parent who led tours throughout the school Thursday, touted the gargantuan windows and big, long hallways at Olson, and also has been using the school's impressive playground. The playground is divided into areas with equipment tailored to younger children and advanced equipment for older students.

Reid's children, Celia and Jessie, will be in first and second grade, respectively, and have walked one mile from their home to the school during the summer to use the playground.

Reid said she's also pleased with the green aspects of the school.

"The playground is fabulous and there is a brand-new library with 5,500 titles that have never been touched," Reid said. "It's pretty exciting.

"I think there is a huge emphasis on natural light and there is a very well thought out flow to the school as far as what common areas there are that are set together and those can be used for after-school activities or other activities."

Pam Emmerich, who has worked in the Madison Metropolitan School district for 14 years, including the last three as assistant principal at Chavez Elementary School, has been working nonstop since last spring to hire teachers and staff, coordinating plans with building services and purchasing classroom furniture and materials.

Throughout the process -- which included 60- to 70- hour work weeks -- Emmerich continued her responsibilities as assistant principal at Chavez.

But it's been a labor of love for Emmerich, whose daughter Madeline will begin kindergarten at Olson the same day her mother opens the doors to students for the first time.

Emmerich said she is thrilled with the freshness of the building and the entire experience.

"Seeing the beauty and newness of the building and meeting all these wonderful staff members is really exciting," Emmerich said. "Looking at this gorgeous space, we're going to be building a new school community here.

"I love the layout of the building and the amount of natural light that we have in all areas of the building. That's the way they designed this building, that virtually having natural light is great.

"The oversized windows are a super feature. I like the long hallway approach. Certain schools have a pod configuration where they're grouped by grade levels within a pod. But I clustered the classrooms as close as I could to the main entrances to centralize them as much as possible."

Olson Elementary has a projected enrollment of 280 students -- with a capacity to accommodate 704 total students. It is the 32nd elementary school in the city and the newest school building since Chavez Elementary was built in 2001. Olson is filled with students from four existing schools -- Chavez, Huegel, Stephens and Crestwood -- including 120 transfers from Crestwood and 70 from Chavez.

When district officials outline plans to open a new school they talk to the City Planning Commission to identify subdivisions around the school that have new real estate development and potential for growth in the near future. When construction of Chavez was completed, Assistant Superintendent Sue Abplanalp said they purposely enrolled the building at 50 percent capacity, and within five years Chavez was overcrowded.

Abplanalp said smaller capacity for enrollment is common within the district when a new school opens.

"We know that we're going to be using all of that space, but we want to be able to make sure the children that move into these new growth areas will be able to attend their school," Abplanalp said. "We could have moved other kids from the district in there, but then we would have to move them out when the growth happened."

Tamira Madsen  —  8/30/2008 3:01 pm