Country Day to snag piece of history: Downtown parcel could fulfill 'Dual Campus Vision'

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:37:09 GMT

By Calvin Fernandez, Page Editor

Nicole Antoine
The Newton Booth campus has a downtown feel. Country Day will probably not occupy the second story during the first year.

A red-brick beauty could be in the high school’s future after the Board of Trustees voted on Feb. 17 to proceed with a plan to lease downtown Sacramento’s Newton Booth campus from Adventure Properties. Located at 2600 V Street, the two buildings’ mossy brick and wrought-iron fencing give them an East Coast ivy feeling with West Coast sunshine. The buildings are right next to Highway 50, but that doesn’t take away from what feels like (although didn’t sound like) Country Day’s future home. “Newton Booth is an incredible opportunity, one that we felt we couldn’t pass up,” Board member Richard Mancina, ’73, said. The Board’s unanimous vote ended a 20-year search for a high-school campus that would fulfill the “dual-campus vision” hatched in 1989 by then-headmaster Dan White. The Newton Booth community is ready and happy to accept the school. “We are looking forward to having a part of the Sacramento Country Day School in the neighborhood,” Bud Halliday, Newton Booth Neighborhoods Association board member, said. The school hasn’t historically gotten along with its Sierra Oaks neighbors, so the new attitude is a welcome change. “We expect the school to bring a positive atmosphere to the neighborhood, in general, raising the quality of life in the area,” Between 1989 and June, 2008, headmasters Dan White, Selden Edwards, and Stephen Repsher looked in turn at 89 different campuses, turning each down for a variety of reasons including a nearby plane crash at a possible Zinfandel site. (See story, pp. 6-7) Repsher describes his most recent discovery as “beautiful.” “This campus stood out for a number of reasons,” Repsher said. “It’s closer than all the others, only seven minutes [driving] from school. The Newton Booth site is much more of a ‘Country Day’ school. It has lots of character, a sense of history and gravitas.” Newton Booth started as a public elementary school in 1921 but was forced to close in 1976 because of restrictions imposed by the Field Act, which required schools to reinforce their buildings for earthquake protection. The school could not afford the renovations. In 1984 the building was acquired by Foundation Health, which invested $2.3 million to retrofit the building with steel beams. “The most compelling reason [to pick this site] was the existing school campus,” Repsher said. According to Repsher, the Newton Booth interior, currently configured like an office building, will cost approximately $900,000 to remodel. In comparison, Repsher noted that it would cost $20-25 million dollars to develop the 80-acre White Rock campus, which, until the discovery of Newton Booth, was the school’s “future campus site.” “White Rock was at least a decade away,” Mancina said. To pay for Newton Booth, the school will use existing funds from White Rock donations, and will raise $600-700,000 in donations. The school will not take any loans and a further tuition hike is not expected, according to Repsher. Along with being a rather frugal snag, the Newton Booth campus offers a lot of expansion room. Its 50,000 square feet of space dwarfs the current high school’s 13,000-square-foot facility (not counting the gym and the multi-purpose room, which Repsher calls shared areas). “The extra space could accommodate many more students, programs and coursework. Everything becomes stronger when you have between 240-300 students,” Repsher said. “You still maintain the sense of intimacy, and classroom sizes remain small.” Not all share Rephser’s optimism. “I think we’re going to lose the sense of Country Day,” senior Kayla Winters, a Lifer, said. “Country Day is small. I know a lot of underclassmen. If it gets bigger, we’re going to lose that connection.” Though some are hesitant about a student body bigger than 150, most private high schools are larger. According to a study done by the Council for American Private Education in 2000, the average private high school enrolled 193 students. California examples include the Francis Parker School in San Diego, with 499 high-school students, and The College Preparatory School in Oakland, which enrolls 350. The school doesn’t plan to increase class sizes but, rather, will increase the number of sections, maintaining the classroom size. “I believe that the building and the location will draw students. It is a true high-school campus,” Repsher said. “I expect it to grow gradually.” Another attraction is the promise of a relatively fast transition. Repsher said that remodeling could take as little as 10 weeks, meaning that the move could occur as early as the beginning of next year. However, the school must obtain a number of permits which could hamper this transition, making Repsher realistically project the move to occur somewhere around the middle of the 2009-10 school year. The fast move worries junior Bill Endicott, a Lifer. “It seems like the [Newton Booth] school is missing a lot of things like athletic and science facilities that seemingly can’t be included by the beginning of next year,” he said. Despite Endicott’s reservations, nearly 70 percent of the high school met the news favorably after Repsher announced it to the student body on Feb. 20. “The growth of the school [will] be amazing,” senior Katie Estep, also a Lifer, said. “They’ll have so many more opportunities at the new campus like clubs and activities.” “All the buildings on this side of the campus are just garbage architecture,” English teacher Ron Bell said. (Bell teaches in a portable behind the gym.) “These belong in a landfill.” (Many of the portables are 20 years old.) “There aren’t enough facilities and the only way they’re going to get [them] is by moving,” Steve Karp, father of junior Austin, said. But some like Winters feel that the move will destroy the community feeling. Fellow Lifer, junior Molly Tash, sees the Latham campus as a second family. “It isn’t the campus that makes the school. It’s the teachers, the community, the academics and the interactions between lower-school, middle-school and high-school students,” Tash said. “I feel like I’m getting kicked out,” In response Repsher mentioned that the “Dual Campus Vision” has always been the plan but that the community would decide what was really important. “I think the Pre-K through 12 community is important to maintain,” he said. “If the community feels that it is important to maintain the connections, then it will happen.” For instance, sports teams will still return to the Latham campus to practice due to a lack of field space at Newton Booth. Other programs like Peers Mentoring Peers (PMP), a mentoring service offered to the middle school through the high school, will have to stop. “I think it would work better if it was between [upperclassmen] and [lowerclassmen] anyway,” PMP counselor Patricia Jacobsen said. Jacobsen plans to continue PMP at Newton Booth but between high school students. Whatever happens, Repsher is confident that it will be for the best. “While you maintain many old traditions, you develop new ones as well,” he said, leaning back in his chair confidently.

The Octagon

Country Day to snag piece of history: Downtown parcel could fulfill 'Dual Campus Vision'