A digital library, solar-heated water, wireless access and sophisticated audio systems in every learning space will help make the Providence Career and Technical Academy one of the finest facilities of its kind in the region when the new high school opens in the fall, according to Bill Bryan, Gilbane Building Co. project director.
He’s supervising the $90 million overhaul of what used to be the James L. Hanley Career and Technical Center on Westminster Street.
“Everything in this building is state of the art,” Bryan told Providence Business News last week. “It is as good as any in New England. This is something the city needed and wanted for a long time.”
According to Christina O’Reilly, spokeswoman for the Providence School Department, “demand was huge” for the new technical academy among parents of middle school students choosing high schools to enter in the fall. “This was, for the year 2009-10, the high school with the highest demand in the city in terms of the number of seats available,” O’Reilly said, citing a 4-to-1 ratio.
The new name comes as “part of a broad effort to have everyone in the community think of this as a new school,” said Andrea Castaneda, acting supervisor of career and technical education for the school district. The renovation and expansion have “more than doubled the footprint of the building,” she said, and the up-to-date technology means “the way you teach really changes. We are really excited to be able to train students on the kind of equipment they’ll find in the actual workplace.”
Although the school will have the capacity for approximately 800 students, the full student population will be phased in over several years. The first students to attend the academy will be the freshmen class entering in the fall and the Hanley upperclassmen who during construction are temporarily housed at the former West Broadway Elementary School on Bainbridge Avenue.
Nine programs will be offered, including five in the building trades: heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC), electrical, plumbing, construction and masonry, as well as four others: automotive technology, graphic communications, culinary arts and cosmetology, according to Castaneda. “In all of these areas, technological developments have changed a lot in the last decade,” she said, “or even the last 12 months.”
Managing architect of the project is StudioJAED, of Wilmington, Del. Working with StudioJAED on the design is The S/L/A/M Collaborative of Glastonbury, Conn. Construction started last June and Bryan said there are as many as 40 subcontractors working on the project, for a total work force of approximately 300.
The project is financed by two bonds issued in 2007 by the Rhode Island Health and Education Building Corporation on behalf of the city.
The first part to open, in September, will be the Hanley wing, a three-story structure that Bryan said includes the majority of the academic classroom spaces, including a library/media center and facilities for the automotive, construction, electrical and graphic communications programs, such as laboratories and classrooms. Although students will be able to obtain traditional books, Castaneda noted that the library/media center will be digital, with access to its offerings provided mostly through laptops. That wing, Bryan said, is 95 percent complete.
The balance of the new construction is scheduled for completion in October and includes art and music rooms, a cafeteria, physical education and athletic facilities, including three basketball courts, an indoor track and locker rooms. This part of the new school also will feature: an administrative-office suite; a guidance-department suite; space for parents, volunteers and community partners; a cosmetology suite with a salon; culinary arts center; plumbing and HVAC laboratories.
“The building incorporates numerous sustainable-design features,” Bryan said. The state education department has adopted the Northeast Collaborative for High Performance Schools (NE-CHPS) building standards, which he explained are similar to the silver level of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria, “but with a couple of twists.”
For instance, LEED does not address acoustics, Bryan said, but NE-CHPS does. Every learning space will be equipped with enhanced sound systems and wireless microphones for instructors. Every classroom will have a LED (light-emitting diode) projector and a “smartboard,” a kind of electronic blackboard plugged into the Internet. The school will be “fully wireless,” Castaneda noted.
Bryan pegged potential energy savings at 40 percent more than building codes require, including solar heat for up to 30 percent of the hot water and “daylight scavenging systems” consisting of lights that automatically go on and off depending on the amount of daylight in the room. “High-efficiency boilers,” Bryan said, will provide gas heat with heat recovery systems, and the entire structure will be air-conditioned.
A 400-seat auditorium, Bryan said, will be “multifunctional” to serve as a performance space, a student presentation area, a student learning area, and can be used for district-wide professional development seminars for teachers.
“We’re very excited about the potential for community partnerships that can be built,” Castaneda said. O’Reilly noted that programs for the academy are being developed with input from representatives of Rhode Island industries and “highly successful” technical schools in other states, so that “we anticipate training students who will be well prepared, whether they go on to secondary education or right into the work force.” •
