Osburn school revamped

CHICKAMAUGA, Ga. -- The conversion of Walker County's old Osburn Elementary School into a center for professional learning, administrative and student services, and also for school transportation and maintenance departments is nearly complete.

Walker County Coordinator of Student Services Chris Chambers said the former school is still sound and offers lots of room for the system's growing needs.

"We're really anxious to get in it," Mr. Chambers said.

The building will become the Advancing Education Center, and its central location in Chickamauga makes sense for the departments it will house, he said.

The system's maintenance workers are doing most of the renovation work, though carpet and tile work was contracted out, he said. Most rooms are outfitted with high-efficiency heat and air units that can be turned on as needed to help keep utility costs down, he said.

All the services moving to the center are leaving cramped quarters elsewhere, he said.

The building also has a gymnasium/auditorium that can be used for community events, summer graduations and training for large groups.

One of the center's primary uses will be for professional learning, but truancy officials, special education staff, school psychologists and other staff members will have offices or training space in the building, too, he said.

On Thursday, a handful of school officials who were working on a grant application were taking advantage of the space and quiet at the center.

OSBURN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL HISTORYThe exact date Osburn Elementary School was established is unknown, but is thought to be in the very early 1900s.The school is named for Augustus Osburn, who donated an old church and an acre of land to form the original two-room school. In 1937, the Osburn Consolidated School was formed from three local school districts; Wallaceville, Missionary Ridge and Osburn. A new building was built to include first through ninth grades.The elementary school as it stands today was completed in 1956. The school in 1956 and the years that followed housed first through fifth grade and had between 350 and 400 students most of the time.The school remained an elementary school until 1998, when Osburn and Mountain View elementary schools were consolidated into Cherokee Ridge Elementary.The Alternative Education Center moved into the old Osburn school building 2001-2002 and closed May 2008. The building sat vacant until fall of 2009 when current renovations began.Source: Walker County Schools

Michael Tipton, coordinator of school improvement, and Christy Evans, academic coach at Ridgeland High School, said they liked their impromptu digs for the day.

Ms. Evans said updates really transformed the building since she last visited.

The center also will offer a new training venue for the food services department, he said. The old school's kitchen is fitted with mostly surplus equipment and some of its own from the building's prior life as the Alternative Education Center, which closed up a couple of years ago.

Mr. Chambers said the center's extra space makes it an good location for the transportation department's buses and operations.

Director of Transportation Kevin Richardson said he's anxious to move, but a workshop must be built first and that's still in the works.

The traffic light at Osburn Road and Frank Gleason Parkway means the county's 108 buses are safer as they head out for the day, Mr. Richardson said. The current bus depot has no traffic light.

Although there's no timeline on the department's move, a "bus wash" is up and running at the center, he said.

The contraption is about the same size as a bus and blasts the vehicles clean on the top and sides with sprayers and brushes. Bus drivers can wash their buses in just a few minutes, compared with 30 to 40 minutes with the old equipment, and that saves county money, he said.

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