Williams Middle School Principal Nicole Forys shows visitors a science lab, where the students’ sinks did not function and were covered with cardboard.
Reminder Publishing photo by Sarah Heinonen
LONGMEADOW — In the lead-up to the Sept. 9 Town Meeting vote on funding the new middle school, the Middle School Building Committee organized tours of both existing middle schools so voters can see for themselves the conditions and limitations educators and students experience.
Williams Principal Nicole Forys led a few people on a tour group through the school, which was built in 1959, eight years before Glenbrook Middle School.
She showed the conditions of each area of the school and explained what was needed to fulfill its educational mission.
As is common with schools built during the post-World War II housing and baby boom, the building’s entrance consists of two sets of doors, with about 8 feet between them. A monitor in the main office shows who is at the front door. The close proximity of the entry doors to each other means well-intentioned people can hold the door open for someone without realizing it creates a security weakness, Forys said. Once past the doors, the main office sits to the right, with the cafeteria and classrooms on the left. Forys said modern security considerations require a space where visitors can be isolated at the front office, without access to other parts of the school.
Forys also pointed out that the doors to her office and that of the vice principal are located directly at the entrance of the main office.
“Students sometimes want to vent at the office,” without the principal overhearing them, she said. Ideally, the administrator’s offices would be further from the front desk to make students more comfortable expressing themselves.
The torn seats and ripped carpet in the auditorium show how wear and tear have taken their toll on the building. Forys said performances and other events are often standing room-only, with not enough room to seat everyone. Additionally, a lack of backstage space creates challenges for storage and when students have to move around backstage. Martine Noble, who recently moved to Longmeadow, peeked in the backstage door. “Oh yeah, there’s no room,” she commented.
That was a common refrain throughout the tour. Forys said classrooms are “cramped,” particularly when paraprofessionals are needed to help students. Musical instruments are stored on rolling metal racks in the hallway outside the music room. In the classroom dedicated to STEAM, there is little space to store materials and ongoing engineering projects. Forys said the science labs are undersized, making it difficult to move around when doing experiments.
The lack of space extends to the number of rooms in the building. The school has a single conference room, and Forys said the room has been double-booked, forcing parents and educators to find alternative spaces to meet. Music shares a room with band and orchestra. Depending on the schedule, “You kind of have to tell the kiddos where they’re going for the day,” Forys said passing by a sign that read “Music in Room 5.” The counseling suites are housed in modular classrooms that were added to the school in 1988. Despite new window frames and an anticipated coat of paint, the space shows its age.
More than size is lacking in the classrooms. The science lab visitors saw on the tour had only one working sink, with the others covered by cardboard. SMART Boards, interactive whiteboards that can display lessons when connected to a computer, have become common in many schools due to their versatility. While some classrooms have this equipment, in others, a mobile SMART Board was wheeled in when needed. At least one room still had chalkboards.
Students have a scheduled recess after lunch, but there is no recreation space directly outside the cafeteria. Instead, the students must go around to another side of the building. The plans for the new school include such a layout, as well as cafeteria doors that can be opened to an outside space where students can eat at tables. The cafeteria at Williams was designed with full glass walls on two sides. While it lets in significant natural light, it also makes the room hot, Forys said. She pointed out tinting that has been placed on the windows to limit the heat from the sun streaming in.
The cafeteria is also where the school hosts its eighth grade dance. “They do a great job making it not look like a cafeteria,” Forys said. When asked why the dance does not take place in the gym, she explained that the gym is often used by the community at the same time as the dance.
Forys noted that the gym has its own limitations. It is not regulation size, which is one reason there are no true bleachers for families to watch their children play. With a relatively narrow area around the basketball court’s boundary lines, each side has just a couple rows of benches. She said that she often watches games standing against the wall. “Hoping the ball doesn’t go out of bounds and hit you?” asked Noble. Forys laughed.
Another common feature of schools from the era is an internal open-air courtyard with plantings. Theoretically, it would be a nice space for outdoor classes, Forys said. However, she said that outside of occasional science assignments, students rarely use it. Its location makes maintaining the landscaping difficult because equipment is often large and cumbersome to bring through the building. This was evident during the tour, as the plants were largely overgrown.
The courtyard was not the only space that had fallen out of use. What was once a carpentry classroom, complete with a cage at the rear to lock up tools, had been repurposed for art. Forys said she is hoping the art room floor in the new school will have a protective coating that makes paint and clay easy to clean. One room in the school where space was wasted was in the intervention room. The room, equal in size to those where 25 students were being educated, was being used to provide services to only four or five at a time.
Forys noted how spread out the related arts classrooms were. Despite being two floors, she said the new school would be organized into wings, making it easy for a student to get to their next class. Sixth and seventh graders would be on different floors, while eighth grade students would move between floors.
Noble’s son, Martin, asked Forys if the school had a space for technology and coding. While Williams does not have a space for that, she said the new school would feature various multipurpose spaces for activities like coding. Forys told him he might be in the new building, scheduled to open in fall 2028, when he reached eighth grade.
Looking forward to the new school, Forys said, “I’m most excited about the classroom spaces and what that will allow teachers to do. Yeah, I’m most excited thinking of all the things we could possibly do.”
More information about the middle school project, including plans and documents, can be found at tinyurl.com/5ekzynvr.
