Bursting at the seams: Teacher begins offering tours at local elementary - East Idaho News
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Bursting at the seams: Teacher begins offering tours at local elementary

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DRIGGS — There’s no longer a stage inside Driggs Elementary School. Old storage closets are now classrooms. The small playground equipment is meant for kindergartners, not third-graders.

Inside the teacher’s lounge, which is inside the old locker room, the turn of a knob on the shower could unleash a deluge onto shelves holding books and chalk and pencils.

“We’ve grown a lot,” said Principal Leanne Gomez. “About five years ago we were at 250 students. Now we’re at 320.”

Inside the school, young children walk far distances between classes, up and down creaky stairs, through other classrooms. Basin Alternative High, which used to be upstairs, now sits on the other side of the wall from the elementary music room.

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The music room sits where the old stage was. Where the large curtain would normally hang, District 401 built a wall because the school had run out of classroom space.

“We’re struggling with space again,” Gomez said.

A proposed $19 million bond to build a new school for the county failed when voters went to the polls last year. It had already failed once more before then. In District 401’s recent board meeting, administrators discussed how another bond could be proposed this year.

One of the challenges Driggs Elementary School is facing, Gomez said, is the fact that many of the K-3 students are being taught in classrooms meant for high-schoolers. Most kindergarten classrooms, she said, usually have a sink and easy access to a bathroom, as well as carpet and space for students to stretch out and “roll around.” Several of Driggs’ classes do not.

But everyone is doing the best they can, trying to stay positive, she said. One teacher’s classroom is prone to flooding through the ceiling: last week she came in to find water-logged ceiling tiles covering her laptop storage space.

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Gomez said the school’s parent-teacher organization has been very helpful as the school has shifted classrooms and moved teachers around. The library, which was once in the kindergarten wing, now takes up the standing-room-only space behind the seats in the auditorium.

“[The PTO] goes above and beyond to help us,” she said. “Parents will come in and they don’t understand why we don’t have a bond.”

Last weekend Tracy-Mae Gonsalves, the school’s gym teacher, began giving tours of the school to community members. Three women came in and she showed them around the school. She’s hopeful that those who don’t normally visit the school can come and appreciate the learning environment. It’s not all bad, she says, and the students and teachers are very resilient, but she notices differences between the students at Driggs Elementary School and Tetonia, where she also teaches.

“[The Driggs students], they’re happy students, they’re just squished,” she said.

Gonsalves is appreciative of Driggs Elementary’s large gymnasium, where she says kids can run around and burn energy. Some students, including the English as a Second Language students, don’t have a view of the outside from their makeshift classrooms; they don’t have windows.

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When students walk up and down the stairs above Gonsalves’ closet-like office next to the gym, dust and dirt fall down from the exposed planking onto her desk. Students whistle through slits in the staircase.

She, like every other teacher, has a small electronic air filter on a desk inside her office. Next to the desk is a boiler room, which emits heat and what she says is dirty air. When an air inspector came through the building last year, she said, he told her to never shut off her filter.

“I’ve had this job for five years,” she Gonsalves said, “what have I been breathing for however long?”

Gonsalves said she thought the school board was being very transparent and supportive of the school, and that the idea for starting public tours of the school came from the administration.

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“My superintendent looked right at me and said, ‘Bring people in,’” she said.

Though the community hasn’t seen the school’s need so far, Principal Gomez said, she hopes they’ll understand the issues at play should the district contemplate another construction bond.

“How do we educate the community about the needs at our school?” Gomez said.

“This is our community’s children. It’s not about who has children and who doesn’t have children. I don’t know how to balance that. That’s a tough one.”

This article was originally published by Teton Valley News. It is used here with permission.

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