Forming Our Future

Forming Our Future: An Invitation

The Saint Louis Language Immersion Schools are growing exponentially each year and the time has come to make some decisions about how we shape our school space for the future.  In order to do that, we need to define the ways that we will functionally engage our students, staff, parents and community members.  We need to answer some very important questions, including:

• How can the facilities express the SLLIS vision?
• How will our schools make us feel?
• Where will our schools be located?
• What facilities needs are most important to us and our students?

By helping us answer these questions and more you can determine the future for the Saint Louis Language Immersion Schools.

Over the next month we will host three community planning sessions and we invite you to participate in these important conversations with us.

Wednesday, November 10th 6pm-8pm : Planning Session #1      Design Philosophy

1. What is most attractive about the SLLIS experience ?
2. What are the obstacles to achieving this ideal experience ?

Saturday, November 20th 10am-12pm : Planning Session #2  Location and site attributes

1. Follow-up questions from Session #1
2. What are the values that we place on our locations ?
3. How do these location values relate to our school vision ?
4. What types of neighborhood relationships would be important for our ideal location ?

Tuesday, November 30th 6pm-8pm : Planning Session #3  Programmatic requirements

1. Follow-up questions from Sessions #1 and #2
2. What are the classroom strategies for dedicated and specialist rooms ?
3. How do we enhance our purpose and place in the community ?

All sessions will be held in the Multipurpose Room at SLLIS.  To facilitate the most impactful conversation, each session is limited to 40 general parent community members.  Please RSVP to Rhonda (rhonda@sllis.org) to confirm your participation.

SLLIS selects SPACE for master facilities planning

One of our most frequently asked questions is about location.  How long will we be located in our current facility?  Where will the subsequent campuses be located?  This fall SLLIS is engaging SPACE Architectural Design Studio, a local architecture firm, to draft our master facilities plan.  This process nd final products will confidently answer the short-term questions (2010-2012) and help us to begin financing our longer-term facilities needs.  The long-term facilities master plan will not identify specific buildings, but inform the profile of our ideal site and provide a cost-benefit analysis of new construction vs. historic or industrial renovation.

We are excited to be partnering with a neighborhood business (SPACE is also located in The Grove) and having the added bonus of working with a TFS family on the SPACE team.  Stay tuned for opportunities to get involved in the master planning process!



Moving to 4011 Papin, 63110

Over the next three weeks we are moving all of our administrative and school-based staff to our new building at 4011 Papin.  The main phone number for both The French School and The Spanish School is (314)533-0975.  This phone line already has a voicemail option, so feel free to leave us a message.

Visit our school building: Saturday, May 9th

This Saturday we will be hosting our Spanish and French demonstration lessons in our school building: 4011 Papin, St. Louis,MO, 63110.  Our demonstration space is complete and the rest of the instructional space is scheduled to be completed by July 1st.  We invite you to come for a sneak peek of the building this Saturday for tours at 10:30am and 1:30pm.

If you haven’t already RSVP’d for a demonstration lesson they are as follows:

Spanish 9am, 10am

French 10am, 11am, 12pm, 1pm.

Call the office to confirm availability: 314 289 1520.

Deed restriction lifted

So you’ve probably heard by now that in a closed session meeting last week the Special Administrative Board of St. Louis Public Schools voted to reverse the deed restriction that prohibited closed SLPS buildings from educational use for 100 years.  The RFT and Post-Dispatch covered it and hopefully The American and West End Word will at least give it a mention in this week’s edition.  As the RFT noted, the details of the reversal are still undetermined and it will not go into effect until June 30th which precludes us from any immediate benefit.  As we begin looking for permanent neighborhood facilities for each school, this will certainly have a positive impact on our search.

The ink is dry

Yesterday afternoon I received the phone call that we’ve been waiting for.  The owner of 4011 Papin had finally signed the 10-year lease for our schools.  As stated in a previous post, we will add a link to the environmental report  from Environmental Operations, Inc. on our website.  The final addition to the lease was the clause addressing minor environmental remediation.  I slept better last night than I had slept in a year and woke up this morning energized, rejuvenated and full of ideas.  Thank you to everyone for your patience and faith.

We will move into (in to?) our administrative offices Friday, May 1st.  This space will also include a demonstration classroom for immersion demonstration lessons, School Project Group meetings and Employee Orientation.  Our instructional space is scheduled to be complete by July 1st for furniture delivery and set-up.

We will soon announce the open house and tour schedule of our new building and look forward to seeing you all there.  Although I still repeat “our school is not our building,” I am looking forward to introducing our building to our learning community.

More facilities insight

The Post-Dispatch published “Ban on Sale of St. Louis Schools Stirs Anger” today that explains the deed restriction in more detail.

RFT article highlights our facilities struggle

Every day this week we have had facilities committee meetings to prepare for lease negotiations next week.  We’re still considering both properties and will deliver updated specs for the owner/developers that include an open classroom setup very similar to Captain Elementary in Clayton.  In between these facilities conversations two papers called us to do stories on the deed restriction that prohibits us from leasing or purchasing a former SLPS building for our educational purpose.  The Riverfront Times article posted today.  Let us know what you think and I’ll keep you updated on negotiations.

Poem: To Be Of Use

Debra Cole, a dear colleague who started the dual-language program in rural Beardstown, IL (pop. 5800) sent the following e-mail after learning our facilities set back last week.  Thanks Debra for keeping our work in your heart!

–

Dear Rhonda and Lisa – I was reading the SLLIS blog this AM, the exciting research Lisa is undertaking and the seeming set back with identifying a location, and thought I’d share with you a poem by American poet Marge Piercy (you may already know it!) It was first shared with me at Christmas time by Gloria and Carla (my WIU cohorts in hard work!).  Thanks for the “work that is real” you are undertaking for SLLIS.

To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Where are you located?

Last week during the final lease negotiations it became clear to our facilities committee that the owner/developer of the Papin space was not ready/able to finance the build-out for our lease space.  In typical SLLIS fashion, we immediately went out to look at other properties, had the team from Christner draw up rough space usage plans and are aggressively pursuing a new location.  Those of you who’ve been with us for a while will remember that we considered the Manchester/MacCausland area early on in the process.  An Office Max recently closed in St. Louis Marketplace and is the appropriate size for a 1-2 year incubator site.

January 15th was our milestone, internal deadline for signing a lease for July 1 occupancy and August 17th first day of school.  Industry professionals tell us that a building in recently occupied white box condition, like this Office Max, can be built out in 60 days.  The owner’s drawings for the space appear more professional to my lay-eyes and we have drafted a new lease for negotiations.  I would love to have good facilities news at next Wednesday’s School Project Group meeting.

Inhale. Our school is not our building. Exhale. The lack of equitable access to facilities hurts more than ever in times like these.