Eastbrook to turn page

DALTON, Ga. -- A $24 million project will replace the 46-year-old Eastbrook Middle School, a structure officials and students say needs too many costly repairs to be a fixer-upper.

The new school will have the space students need to work together, said Yuleyka Nunez, an eighth-grader at the school.

"When we have to do hands-on work, there's not space in our classroom, so we have to go out into the hallways," Yuleyka said. "Since our hallways are so narrow, we don't have space there, either."

Most Eastbrook classrooms are heated with radiators, cooled with window air conditioners and have ceiling tiles stained by a leaky roof. Paint on the concrete block in some classrooms is flaking off because water has seeped through the walls, and carpets are tattered from 17 years of use.

Principal Brian Satterfield said the school was built as a high school in 1964, turned into a middle school in 1975 and last updated in 1993. The new school will match up with the county's high-tech, project-based approach to teaching, he said.

Project-based learning is a teaching method in which students work together on projects that are applied to real-world situations in a hands-on setting, Mr. Satterfield said.

The new school will be similar to the county's latest addition, Cedar Ridge Elementary, which was designed with project-based learning in mind, officials said. Cedar Ridge features an open design, multistudent tables rather than individual desks and plenty of state-of-the-art technology such as high-resolution projectors and wall-mounted, touch-sensitive computer screens.

Mr. Satterfield said Eastbrook has some of those high-tech devices, but they must be moved from class to class because the school's antiquated electrical system never was meant for power-hungry technology.

"When we have the Coke machine and microwave on at the same time, it even blows fuses," he said.

Yuleyka and seventh-graders Jessica Flores and Jacob Mashburn said a new school will help students get the most out of their learning experiences.

Jacob said the lack of a modern electrical system limits the number of students who can use the school's few pieces of high-tech equipment.

Jessica said the ceilings leak whenever it rains and the aging building looks dirty, even when it's clean.

The students said visitors leave with a bad impression of them because of the school's condition.

Whitfield has $4.2 million in educational special purpose local option sales tax money already budgeted for Eastbrook, and another $15.8 million in money saved on other projects across the district, said Tim Trew, the Whitfield County Board of Education chairman. Add in $5 million in capital

outlay funding and the tally covers the school's estimated $23.7 million price tag, he said.

CLASS NOTESName: Eastbrook Middle SchoolEstablished: 1964Principal: Brian SatterfieldNumber of students: 625Number of teachers: 42Address: 700 Hill Road, Dalton, GA 30721

The poor economy has lowered construction prices, Mr. Trew said. The system's $45 million Coahulla Creek High School is being built at what amounts to "1994 prices," and officials hope the Eastbrook project will follow a similar path, he said.

The new school, to be built behind the old one on the same property, will incorporate the old gym and a few attached classrooms, officials said.

Students will stay in the old building until the new one is finished, saving the system about $2 million on mobile classrooms, he said.

Yuleyka has high hopes for the new school.

In her mind's eye, the new school "would be almost like a college," she said.

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