A year from now, the new Garden City Elementary School should be ready to welcome students for the 2023-2024 school year. The $53 million project is now almost fully enclosed and Dimeo Construction is halfway through completing roof work. According to Cranston Public Schools’ Chief of Facilities Management and Capital Projects Ed Collins, once the building is fully encapsulated, things will start cranking up.

The approximately 80,000 square foot building sees 80 to 90 workers onsite five days a week. With the structure coming together, it’s easier to visualize what the final product will look like.

The district is doing away with traditional classrooms. Instead, the interior’s two floors will consist of five learning commons that will be shared by multiple teachers and different grades. Each learning commons will have an area for peer tutoring, independent studying and small/large group collaborations.

Collins said these spaces support all 20 teaching modalities and include advisory rooms for students and a shared room for teachers’ desks. In the traditional school model, teachers would be down the hall from one another and, unless they were in the lunchroom together, wouldn’t see one another or have time to collaborate.

“The idea is it promotes teacher collaboration,” said Collins.

By being in the same area, Collins said the learning commons setup allows educators to pair students who are at the same level of learning and who are not necessarily in the same grade.

The learning commons includes flexible seating so kids can come in, create the space they want and put everything back where it belongs at the end of the day; there will also be outdoor learning commons space teachers can take advantage of.

“Every single square foot of this place has an educational value,” Collins said.

Collins explained that the roughly 3,000 square foot cafeteria is “the central heart of the school,” and CPS wants everything connected to that area. He said schools tend to have two or four floors and, when students are on the top floors, they’re disconnected from the rest of the building. In the newly designed cafeteria, students on the second floor will be able to overlook the space.

The cafeteria is not just an area to eat food. This spot will be a main activity area with flexible seating and a dropdown screen. The cafeteria allows for nighttime events, all types of education modalities and even has a large set of stairs (like you see in colleges) that kids can sit on and do their work. USB ports will be installed along the stairs so students can plug in laptops.

Meanwhile, the school’s library will be housed on the first floor and act as a warehouse for reading material. Each learning commons has its own library section and will move books in and out of the library as needed. Additionally, the school’s gymnasium – which has a transition hallway from the building’s learn commons areas – will be available for school use and community events.

Collins added that Garden City Elementary will have state-of-the-art security features. Their security office will have a mantrap so people can be buzzed into the school, and office space for the nurse, principal and assistant principal will be located to the left after individuals walk through the security area.

As for the supply and demand of materials, Collins said everything is running 30 to 40 percent over projected costs and there are two problems CPS is dealing with: One, whether the district can afford what they originally designed, and two, whether the district can get products in on time. When they can’t get materials, Collins said the design component changes; every time something simple is altered in a design, it has ramifications for everything leading up to it. Most recently, the arrival date for Garden City’s switchgear panel kept getting pushed back to the point where CPS wouldn’t receive it for a year or two. Collins said the whole panel had to be redesigned and increased the project’s cost by $197,000.

Because of the project’s size, CPS is carrying owners’ contingency and has a construction management contingency with Dimeo Construction for $1.2 million. Those funds are used to take care of design, field coordination and needed changes.

In designing the new school, teachers and administrators participated in professional development a year before construction started. The space was designed with input from teachers on what they needed and teaching methods they wanted to use. 

“I think for all this time we’ve been building schools and cookie cutting them and sticking teachers in the middle of them,” Collins said. “We’re not building schools, we’re changing the way education is delivered.”

Students also played a role in Garden City’s design by working with Natural Pod to create three pieces of furniture for the school. Additionally, the beam that students signed last year now hangs in the building’s transition area from the learning commons to the gymnasium. 

Collins said this project would not have been achievable without the buy-in from teachers and administrators. He gave a shout-out to Dimeo Construction which has been a big part of the project and spent months value engineering the job so there would be no overspending on items that were not necessary in the school.

As for long term plans, the district is looking to complete its five year plan by 2025 which includes Garden City, Eden Park, Gladstone Elementary and several smaller projects. The district, which has 26 schools, would like to come out with another five year plan.