Voters head to the polls on Aug. 2 to decide on a $75 million school bond proposal. The Clarkston News is touring the school district to see where. what and why it is needed. In the second of a series, we check out Shashabaw Middle School.

If the $75 million bond passes, Sashabaw Middle School (SMS) would receive about $6.3 million.

Building Site Improvements
One million dollars would be used for classroom and media center furniture, student project displays, and other building improvements.
“Collaboration within group work is best when the whole group sees the thoughts being generated for the project,” said Deputy Superintendent Shawn Ryan. “This model can be enhanced with concepts similar to those used in the work world. Markable surfaces, and areas to pin up and display work are common ways schools are providing for this.”
Displays would be fixed or movable, Ryan said.
“The concept is enhanced when other groups within the class and even the rest of the school can see the work and provide input,” he said. “This is often accomplished by providing more visibility between rooms and the corridor system.”
Another $900,000 will go towards media center renovations, ADA upgrades, LED lighting and sensors, flooring replacements, update of paint and finishes, clock-system replacement, and a gym partition.
The partition would be a curtain instead of a wall, said Wes Goodman, executive director of operations.
“We’ve had to create our own and really manufacture our own parts when it’s been broken to make it work again. We haven’t used it in quite a while because it’s beyond repair,” Goodman said “If we put a curtain up and down, it will be a lot less weight.”

Safety & Security
Current security at SMS is a person who buzzes people in as they come to the door, like at the high school.
If a crowd comes, Goodman said, it becomes hard for the person to monitor and stop everyone before entering the main part of the school.
The plan is to add a second set of doors, so a person is buzzed in twice. This would be part of the “three rings of security,” he said.
“The first ring is working well, we have the buzz-in, we keep the building locked, but when they get in here, that’s where the second ring would be,” Goodman explained. “If we can keep them here, before they go in and we see something crazy, we can call a lockdown to the classrooms, but we don’t have the second ring right now.”
The third ring is classroom door locks. New locks are about $150 per door, he said.
“You want to have good quality devices, so it’s not something you run to Home Depot and get,” he added. “Nothing against Home Depot, but for commercial (products) everything does get a little pricier. Not every door is the same, so we could get into having to change out the plate and everything else to make that work.”
Also, apart of safety and security includes improving vehicle and bus traffic flow ($300,000), additional parking and new lighting ($335,000).
“We share this parking lot with North Sashabaw (elementary), so it’s a coordinated effort to not have parent-teacher conferences on the same night or planned activities,” Goodman said. “This campus is really tight. Even though we do coordinate and we have this nice parking lot right straight across from North Sashabaw, it’s still a cluster with traffic flow.”
They will also add sidewalks from Maybee Road all the way back to the middle school on both the east and west sides of the school. Goodman said Independence Township agreed to put in a safety-path on the eastside.
“We have parents that will be late to work and drop their kid off at Maybee Road, let them cross and walk in,” Goodman said. “We also have parents coming to the parking lot here and dumping (kids off), so we’re going to really try and control that better.”
Safety and security also includes $114,500 for new security cameras and TVs.

Educational Technology
The district is looking to spend approximately $1.1 million in technology and infrastructure costs.
According to the budget, just over $1.1 million will be spent on technology at the middle school, which will include

audio/visual systems, network infrastructure and staff/student lab device upgrades.
Like the high school, SMS has outdated computers with XP Windows. Angela Harrison, district administrator of technology, said it’s more expensive to buy Windows machines than Chromebooks or Chrome bases.
However, they still need Windows machines for some things such as state testing for the M-STEP.
“It’s one of the larger buildings student-wise, we have trouble making sure there are enough devices for testing, especially this year because M-Step stopped supporting XP,” Harrison said.
Harrison did note they have received about $80,000 a year, for the past three years, from the Technology Readiness Infrastructure Grant, which is to help schools prepare for testing. With the grant money, they have been able to install wireless routers and buy testing devices.
They also use Windows-based devices for all the building and system controls used by Goodman’s department.
Harrison said they’ve slowly started upgrading technology throughout the building, but intermixing old and new causes issues.
“You’re talking two different fingers. It’s difficult to get them to talk together,” she said. “So we end up troubleshooting a lot more than what we should have to do on the network.”
Part of their upgrades will include Power over Ethernet, which Goodman said will be a huge help.
“Instead of having electricity at a camera, plus a cable, Power over Ethernet allows power to that camera with one cable,” he said.
Part of the gameplan, Goodman added, is to have all security camera video stored on a hard-drive on a server at the high school, where the server room would be backed up by generators.
“Without upgrading all the rest of the switch closets throughout the district we’re unable to implement that kind of security solution,” Harrison said. “We’re also unable to implement a voiceover IP solution for our telephone system. Our telephone system was purchased in 1998 and so it’s very old and again the company doesn’t really support it. We spend a lot of money on a hardware maintenance program because it’s so old.”
As part of the overall technology infrastructure, Harrison said they currently have lower grade cables throughout the district which are currently “OK,” but within the next ten years they will need to be replaced.
SMS, which holds both sixth and seventh graders, was built in 1969, but had a major addition added in 2005. The school can hold 1,417 students. Last year they had 1,143 students enrolled.
“We doubled the space,” Goodman said. “It was a 135,000-square-foot building. We added on 135,000 so we’re about even at 270,000 square feet.”
GMB Architecture and Engineering prepared a master capital list including a long-range 10-year plan for all district needs.
For a complete list of bond items and cost, visit www.clarkston.k12.mi.us. See next week’s edition for details on Springfield Plains Elementary.