Sierra Madre Middle School Prepares for Next Phase of School Reconstruction

’s upper campus is thriving and surviving the first of three transitional years, as an upgraded facility project is built around the 334 6th, 7th, and 8th graders who attend school on the campus.  Students appear unfazed and focused on academics while the site awaits the next phase of the project funded by Measure TT in 2008.

Last summer, according to Garrett Newsom, administrator for the middle school (upper campus), the teachers packed up their classroom supplies when the 2009-10 school year ended, and stored them onsite. Then, in the fall, the staff had just a brief time to extricate the stored materials to set them up in the temporary campus configuration from which the school will function for about three years.

During last summer many of the structures and playfields were razed, and the ground leveled. A series of temporary classrooms, which they’re calling “bungalows” instead of portables, were assembled on the south end of the campus for the 6th and 7th graders, who do not mix academically with 8th graders. To use the school’s vernacular, it’s the south village.

On the north side of the campus, (the north village), the 8th graders are using one of the old buildings, which is out of the way of the construction, for now. 

This year the plan preparation and submission to governmental agencies for approval has gone well, under the supervision of Frazer Thompson, the Pasadena Unified School District's representative and the construction project manager for the $25 million Sierra Madre upper campus project plus a slew of other projects in process, including an addition to Sierra Madre’s lower school at the Highland Avenue campus. Newsom and other PUSD staffers always tack on a note of appreciation when speaking of Thompson’s coordination and organization of the project. “He is amazing,” said Garret Newsom. 

Newsom chuckled that the students seem to take the project pretty much in stride, with the exception of when it rains.

“Everyone walking between the North to South Villages and to the rest rooms has to walk through at least an inch or two of water when it rains the way it has this winter,” he said.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any other place to put the 6th grade village during the construction, except on the lowest part of the school site.

“The whole site drains right here,” Newsom said, pointing to sand bags and a drainage swale at the southeast corner of the property.

A double “bungalow” was fitted together and configured as a small multi-purpose room, choir room and lunch facility, while the teacher work room multi-tasks as a space for small group work, as evidenced on Newsom’s tour, when a parent volunteer had eight students there for reading work.

For outside activities, he continued, “We have only one field to use, so we’re walking to the community center to use the fields there,” said Newsom. “So if you see a few dozen middle schoolers hiking down Canon or Sierra Madre Boulevard over the next few years, you’ll know they’re on their way to the fields there.”

After all the governmental approvals and permissions are in place, Thompson will put the project out for bid to general contractors with sufficient bonding to cover the whole project.  Ideally, construction will start in the summer, and the students will be in a new facility by the Fall of 2013.

Pasadena based PBWS Architects has designed the project, and Wade Frazier, Associate Principal, provided current graphics and a site plan with captions available in the photo section of this article.

Regular updates go out on the construction progress, which can be viewed on the Sierra Madre School website at http://sierramadre.pasadenausd.org/. The most recent is linked below:

http://sierramadre.pasadenausd.org/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/917192/File/PUSD%20Weekly%20Construction%20Updates/PUSD%20Neighbor%20Update%2022.pdf?sessionid=7a69ef4c2e0c7dd23f526286f5446b5d&sessionid=7a69ef4c2e0c7dd23f526286f5446b5d