News update for Frederick High School Students and parents!

The summer of 2020 FHS has some huge plans coming its way. Some Warriors may have noticed the flags outside of the school surrounding the front and back of the east wing. Other warriors may have noticed the small amount of polished concrete in the history hallway.

The biggest part of the reconstruction is the new wing that is going to be built. With the school expanding and FHS now bringing in the PTECH program, we need more classrooms and space to house classes. Along with that our school population is growing rapidly and bringing in a higher number of students each year. Because of that, it limits the school to the point where teachers are sharing classrooms. Class sizes are now double the size compared to what they were a few years ago too. The hope of this new wing is to decrease all the issues that we have and to make it easier for students and teachers at FHS.

The plan for the new wing is to add eight classrooms to the east side of the building. On the upstairs floor will be two more science classrooms along with three traditional classrooms on the opposite side. Downstairs will have another three classrooms with the opposite side being more dedicated to the PTECH program. The PTECH program consists of a classroom, open learning commons, and a couple of offices. All of the downstairs classrooms will also have walls that open up which will help the classrooms to expand if needed.

“We can make it either one big classroom that could fit one hundred- fifty kids or three small classrooms that can fit ninety students.” Brian young told us while we talked to him about it.

Behind this project is a small group of teachers and students who have been working with the architects and designers to create this new wing. Although they don’t make all the decisions there the main objective is to make sure that each classroom has the right necessities it needs in order to be a good and suitable classroom. For example, should the English classrooms have more bookshelves and cabinets or less? And how much storage do the science classrooms need?

Besides the new wing that’s going to be built FHS also plans on redoing the floors throughout the school too.

“As you can see there’s cracking so in the downstairs hallway there going to be removing all of the tiles and making it polished concrete. This will make it look nicer, cleaner, and easier to maintain.” Young told us while we talked to him.

Through further research, we learned that another reason why the school is redoing the floors is due to some shifting in the soil.  So to help prevent the school from sinking into the ground more the tile is being removed to take off some of the pressure.

The main question that kept popping into our heads while learning about this reconstruction is how do current teachers feel about the reconstruction? While talking to many different teachers we saw a ton of different responses.

Kevin Davis who is a science teacher here at FHS is both happy and unhappy about the reconstruction. His reasoning is that he’s happy that some of the science teachers here will get a chance to have their own classrooms but he’s also not too thrilled because he knows that the construction won’t be done by the end of the summer and he’s worried that it may impact his class.

Mrs. Lesage who’s an art teacher here also gave us a helpful answer. Although not impacted by the reconstruction she thinks that the arts side of the school is going to need some more classrooms as the school continues to grow.

“It’s going to be an issue that we have to deal with eventually because the population in this area is growing like crazy. Plus we want to strengthen the art program. The more classrooms the better!”

The most interesting opinion that we heard from some of the teachers was from Desiree Paswaters who is a psychology and geography teacher at FHS. Although she won’t be affected by the reconstruction at all she does have some concerns about it. With our new PTECH program coming into the school she wasn’t sure how it may affect the feeling or overall atmosphere of the school.

“I kind of feel like it’s made a little bit of a dichotomy, in other words, there’s the rest of us who work at Frederick and then there are the PTEC teachers, so is it going to be its own little school or are we going to be more integrated?”

This project is going to start the day after graduation and will take up to ten months to be complete. The floors will be done by the end of the summer. The reconstruction and new addition will be going on throughout the school year.

Lots of questions. Lots of concerns and huge things coming Frederick High Schools way. We’re all excited and curious. We’re also nervous about not knowing how this will affect the school atmosphere. Overall though we can’t wait to see what’s going to happen.