Transition plan in effect for Danville Schools
Published 7:18 am Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Board members heard more about the schedule for transforming the Danville Independent Schools from a district with three elementary schools to two on Monday night.
“Typically this time of year everybody’s worried about closing out school,” said Brian Gover, director of technology for the district. “That’s still the case, but this year we have some added, we’ll say, anxiety — especially for our elementary staff and district staff.”
One of the big dates is June 4, when the office staff in the respective schools move to “their new homes,” Gover said.
“From that point on, the Hogsett on Waveland will cease to exist as far as calling and getting ahold of people,” Gover said.
Hogsett on Waveland, which will eventually become Mary G. Hogsett Primary School and home to the district’s preschool through first-grade students, is scheduled to reopen by August 2019. In the meantime, construction and renovation will be going on at the school.
Those students and staff members will be housed at “Hogsett on Main,” currently known as Jennie Rogers Elementary School, during that transition period. Gover said the phone number for Hogsett will remain the same, but will be rerouted to the interim new location on Main.
When the renovations are complete at the Waveland campus, the former Jennie Rogers Elementary School will undergo renovations to become home to the district central office.
The district’s second- through fifth-grade students will be starting this fall in the newly-finished Edna L. Toliver Intermediate School. The technology changes needed were more in-depth and involved than originally expected, Gover said — they spent two hours working on phone extensions to ensure the “new Toliver” extensions matched the room numbers.
He said next week would be the final crunch time for teachers to get their classrooms packed up, an upheaval that began in April.
“Our teachers have done an excellent job the past few weeks of packing everything,” Gover said.
Christy Denny, director of administrative services for the district, said everything was scheduled to be very concise.
“It’s scheduled pretty tightly so that we can make sure we don’t ignore our other buildings,” Denny said. “We’ve got to make sure we have time to take care of our whole district as opposed to just our transition.”
This week, the district maintenance staff will begin moving boxes and other items to their new homes. Denny said each room would have a list of the items to go into the rooms. They have also recruited help from outside the district to help move everything.
“Everything’s got a place to go,” she said. “I want it to flow quickly and smoothly.”
The goal, Gover said, is to have the classrooms ready for staff by July 16
“Teachers will be able to come at that day and get their new keys or ID cards and start working in their rooms,” Gover said.