Print edition: 
In less than a year, staff and students at a Derby elementary school will trade leaky, cramped portables for state-of-the-art, energy-efficient learning areas.
Cooper Elementary School, a high-poverty school where a majority of students are learning English as a second language, received a $2.1 million federal grant as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Construction is scheduled to start this fall and is expected to be completed in July 2011.
"We're obviously going to spend a lot of money," said Gaylord Dold, grants coordinator for Derby.
"It will go into the economy directly," he added, saying district officials hope to buy materials and hire workers from regional companies.
He said the renovation of the 56-year-old school, located inside the Wichita city limits near the Oaklawn neighborhood, will provide adequate space for students who need intensive instruction
and benefit from working in smaller groups.
"If you can't meet students' basic needs, they don't have the opportunity to learn," Cooper principal Vince Evans said.
A new gym that will also serve as a FEMA storm shelter will be built, allowing more time and space for P.E. because the current gym also serves as a cafeteria.
A library wired for state-of-the-art technology will be the other addition to Cooper.
The new library space will leave the current library to be turned into small classrooms for students struggling in reading or math, or for English learners, taking them out of 21-year-old portables and closets.
The library will be remodeled into four offices separated by doors, not by partitions that let noise carry over to the next cubicle.
"The math teacher was thrilled to be out here (in a portable) because last year she was working out in the hallway," he said, adding the school achieves state testing targets each year.
Of the 291 Cooper students, 136 require intensive reading instruction, and 195 need specialized math instruction, according to Derby schools.
The federal grant requires that the remodeling be done in an environment-friendly way.
"We'll spend a lot of time looking at materials and practices to make it more energy-efficient," said Terry Wiggers of Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture, the firm designing the Cooper project.
He said some energy-efficient methods are similar to those the firm's architects used in Wichita's Earhart Environmental Magnet, which was designed entirely as a "green" building.
At Cooper, thermal windows and increased insulation will be installed to reduce energy costs, Wiggers said. Restrooms will be remodeled with ultra low-flow toilets.
Much of the material used to build the additions will be made from recycled material and is easily recyclable itself, including roofing, carpet, tile and acoustic ceiling tile.
The new library will have sky lights to let in natural light, and artificial lights will be low wattage with motion sensors to shut them off when rooms are empty.
"The building's maxed out in its capability to take on new technology," Wiggers said. "(Additions) will have fully modernized technology in them."
But the renovation means more than a beautiful and technologically advanced environment for Cooper students, Evans said.
"It's a more equitable environment to learn," he said. "You go down to one of the new schools — this gives them the same opportunity."
The compressed construction schedule, which was a requirement of the grant, will disrupt activities this coming school year. But he said the reactions he received from teachers were "tears of joy."
"We'll make it happen," Evans said. "Even if I have to build outhouses out there."
