The middle school component of the long-range facilities plan was discussed at the BOE meeting on Oct. 19. The board is investigating the possibility of turning the Sousa School into the middle school, accommodating grades 6-8 with a targeted enrollment of 1,200. To this end, a comparison of the model middle school and the existing Sousa School building was made by Franklin Hill and Associates, the district's educational facilities planner.

For this, an estimate of an additional 107,271 square feet of space at Sousa was made. Following is a list of some of the additional space needed to accomplish this.

For administration: need principal office, conference room, two assistant principal offices, reception area, staff lounge/kitchenette, storage rooms, in-school suspension room, school store, misc. space.

For counseling: 3 offices, reception area, secretarial work areas

For medical services: clinic for 4 cots, handicap restroom.

General classrooms: 18 needed plus conference rooms, a 2 computer mini lab.

Science rooms: 8-7th/8th grade science labs, 4 shared prep rooms. 8-6th grade science

Special education: 6 resource rooms, 3 self-contained, 1 PEP room, 1 OT/PT room, handicapped restroom.

ESL: 3 ESL rooms and 1 adjoining teacher/assistant office.

Art: no new square footage needed, however assumes converting cafeteria and kitchen to an art complex.

Music: band room, orchestra/choral room, ensemble rooms, etc. This assumes a major expansion of the music program in new construction.

Home and Career skills: sewing classroom, foods classroom, etc. The plan is to build a home and career suite because the current home economics rooms will be used to create centralized commons and cafeteria/dining area.

Media center: need one additional reading room, small group instruction/media viewing space, 800 square feet of stacks, computer area, circulation area, three computer labs and an 800 square foot media production studio. (Franklin Hill noted that the existing media center on the 2nd floor is inadequate. It has been cannibalized for remedial reading. A new media center is needed.)

Technology education includes a major cannibalization of Sousa's existing art rooms to convert to a tech. ed. suite.

Physical education: needs 9,000 square foot dividable gym/bleachers, 1,904 square foot girls' and boys' locker rooms, plus several new storage areas. The plan assumes major new construction of a replacement gym with the existing gym being utilized for dance/wrestling.

Other additional miscellaneous space includes toilets, general storage space, custodial space, dining for 400 plus a food service area.