TheReview Wednesday, November 11,1992 — C8

BAYSIDE BEGINNINGS...

A new school is not created overnight.
Bayside Middle School was first conceived
five years ago, long before architects
began their first drawings. Long before the
Wallace Drive site was cleared and a new
name was chosen.

Mount Newton Middle School had served
the district, its students and communities
well for over half a century. Constructed
in an era when computer technology and
telecommunications was the stuff of
science fiction, the peninsula’s first high
school was overcrowded, out-of-date and
ill-equipped to undertake new educational
directions. The nature of the students

Teacher Robyn Evans: “We started at the
dream level...”

_ Congratulations

to our colleagues
in 2 Saanich from the teachers
of Greater Victoria

Greater Victoria
Teachers’ Association

themselves had changed. The Saanich
School District realized that only a new
middle school could effectively reflect —

_ these changes.

By September, 1987, the Ministry of
Education had given its approval for the
construction of a new school. A Future
Middle School Advisory Committee was
formed, bringing together district
administrators, teachers, trustees and
parents. The planning began..

“This Process Was Different...”
remembers Bayside Middle School

Principal, Betty Clazie. “It was different

because the Mount Newton staff initiated —
questions and answers before we ever
talked to an architect.”

“I think it was different because we
started with an educational concept,” says
teacher Robyn Evans. Through their —
participation in a School Steering
Committee and numerous sub

committees, Bayside’s future teachers and

parents were involved in the school’s"
design process from the very beginning.

Each of the school’s programs was broken —

down into 13 different categories,
including such diverse concerns as"
movement within rooms, environmental —
considerations and equipment needs. The
final education specifications document,
completed in January of 1989, filled 133
pages. “Then,” says Betty Clazie,
“architect Donovan Marshall had to make

sense of it all!”

f.n. fenger &

CONSULTING ELECTR]

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TODAY'S ED
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Jf Today’s Learn

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Jf Teachers Are
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important roles.

‘science and th