WESTMINSTER — Compass School has broken ground on what Admissions Director Rick Cowan calls the biggest capital construction project in the school's history.
Backed by a $1,105,000 direct loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development's Community Program, the school is building a 2,000-square-foot addition that will create a new arts lab, a new science lab, a Spanish-language classroom, two quiet-study spaces, new staff offices, and what Cowan calls “a welcoming front porch.”
The addition will feature energy-efficient lighting and ceilings.
“This new construction builds on 14 years of accomplishment at Compass,” said Cowan. “We've always been strong at integrating the arts throughout the curriculum. Creating a dedicated lab space for artistic work will allow students and teachers to extend this already key part of the educational program.”
Serving communities as far away as Springfield, Brattleboro, and Bondville, Compass School has a philosophy of engaged and integrated learning and has become a national model.
Bill Preble, professor of education at New England College in Henniker, N.H., said that of the 500 schools he evaluated, “Compass School rated as having the highest level of school climate in country.”
In 2011, Preble and Rick Gordon, Compass School's founding director, co-wrote Transforming School Climate and Learning Beyond Bullying and Compliance (Corwin, 2011), which evaluated schools and classrooms for “positive climate.”
Preble explained that what he found on the Compass campus was “a lot of autonomy of choice for students to pursue questions and interests that keeps them motivated and engaged,” which is a very “positive climate” for educating students.
He had brought his education class to Compass the day he spoke with The Commons, so they could see “the different kinds of choices that schools or teachers make, how they make them, and how teachers design and structure their curriculum.”
Preble said Compass's choice not to lecture kids all day, and not to tell children to “sit down and shut up,” contributes to a positive learning climate.
Preble said that, typically, on the way home, he hears statements like, “I wish had gone to a school like that. I might have liked school more,” and “I've never seen anything like that before.”
He said he brings his educational psychology class to Compass School twice a year.
“We are looking at engaged learning and at the extent to which students are motivated and focused on learning,” as part of their study of the brain in learning.
'We don't have an arts space...'
Gordon explained that the USDA Rural Development-funded loan process actually began several years ago when he met with the Vermont Council on the Arts and said, “We have arts throughout curriculum.”
Gordon said they asked where the art was produced, and he had to tell them, “We don't have an arts space.”
He said they were “flabbergasted,” and recalls they responded that, “If it is such a part of our curriculum, you really need a [dedicated] arts space.”
Gordon's response was that, as a nonprofit, “We just don't have the money.”
But that conversation made an impression on Gordon. At first, he said, he imagined an “art yurt” sprung up in the middle of the parking lot. But Saxtons River landscape architect Julie Moir Messervy later helped him see the facility's true potential: with art so central to school, she said, an arts space “should be featured in the middle of the building - not off to the side - so that it sends a clear message.”
And that's when the wheels really started turning.
Gordon arranged as part of the school's curriculum to have Compass students work with Keene State College architecture students to develop a plan that included a new art space and science lab area. That, he said, would resolve the question, “How do we integrate art centrally in the building?”
Now with a rough plan in hand (Weller & Michal Architects of Harrisville, N.H., were brought in to reinterpret the students' plan such that the USDA would approve it), Gordon called on USDA Rural Development Community Program Specialist Andrea C. Ansevin-Allen, based in Brattleboro, to see what she could do to help make the dream a reality.
Ansevin-Allen said the project excited her from the start, knowing well, she said, that “Compass School provides an amazing service” to the community.
She said when loan applicants, especially nonprofits, come to her office, she tries to find a way to say, “Yes.”
When Brattleboro Savings & Loan reportedly declined to finance the interim construction loan, Ansevin-Allen's agency stepped up and financed it directly.
(Typically, guaranteed USDA Rural Development loans are paid out upon completion of the project, necessitating an interim lender to bridge the gap.)
Although the architects had vetted and recommended Westfield Construction Co. of Springfield as the construction contractor, the bank disagreed with their choice.
Gordon said they went back to Westfield and got the contractor's guarantee on the project to the satisfaction of the school, the architect, and the USDA RDCP.
Ansevin-Allen then took the project to her bosses in Montpelier, where, she said, “when we bring these issues up to the state office, they are very supportive.”
She said the RCDP has lots of funding available for helping nonprofits with capital projects, their main focus. Compass School is not in business to make a profit, she said, and that makes them a good match for funding.
“There were a few years where it had been a bit of a struggle,” Ansevin-Allen said, “Profit is not the point.”
Ansevin-Allen said she works with nonprofits on their ability to repay the loans, perhaps by refinancing previous loans, “to allow them to have a stronger repayment ability for the entire loan.”
Such loans are established as long-term repayment plans so nonprofits know what they have to repay and when, and that the payment plan won't be altered.
“The time frame was getting short for the construction schedule, and we do have the option of direct funding, and we saw this project as a priority and wanted to be able to move forward on it,” Ansevin-Allen said.
To that end she shepherded approval for a direct community facility loan of $1,105,000.
“We try to find ways to say yes and make things happen. We are very cognizant that these are once-in-a-lifetime projects” and want to “provide whatever assistance we can.”
Ansevin-Allen said, too, it was important that, “not only are they going to be able to expand the facility to provide better classroom space, but they [also] are going to incorporate some energy efficiency. And we really like to see projects with some energy efficiency components.”
Indeed, she characterized energy-efficiency as one of the USDA's administrative priorities.
Meanwhile, ground for the project was broken last week, and staff offices were moved to the far end of the school, away from the disruption of construction.
Gordon said he estimates the construction will be complete for classes to start in the fall. At that point, Compass School will have both an art and science lab.