Clinton Rosette Middle School Principal Chris Ross said the school’s overcrowding issues need immediate attention if all students are to receive the best education at this critical educational stage in their lives.

With a capacity supposedly not to exceed 750 students, Clinton Rosette, 650 North First St., faces the difficult task of accommodating 827 students during the current school year and, Ross said, a potential 850 students the following year.

Not including the prices estimated within various teacher surveys outlining additional needs for the school, Clinton Rosette’s portion of the proposed $39.8 million referendum would be $1,162,886.

The primary goal for Clinton Rosette and Huntley Middle School, 821 S. Seventh St., within the proposed referendum, is to transfer and disperse fifth-grade students from the middle schools back down to the elementary level.

Ross said to even out both her school and Huntley to about 650 students, Clinton Rosette would send half of its sixth graders to Huntley, while half of Huntley’s seventh and eighth graders would come to Clinton Rosette.

Ross said classroom size has predicated a need for a referendum because most classrooms are filled to their 32-seat capacity. The school has, over the past two years, reached the maximum number of students it can hold and has had to resort to mobile classrooms.

Within this mobile facility, two classrooms accommodate 26 students each, and during most days can become overly cramped, Ross said. She said it could be a real strain for these students who have about a five-foot-wide entryway to stash all of their coats and boots. Whenever these students have to go to gym, music or lunch, they have to bundle up, walk outside in the cold and then dump all their belongings in a side entrance of the school.

Ross said many other problems hinder a positive, stress-free working environment for their children. For one, the school’s Encore Reading Program is located in the corner of the boys old locker room, bordered off by lockers and sinks. In another portion of the locker room, located up a flight of stairs, is the multiple physical exercise room for students with disabilities, which is not handicap accessible. In this same area, tables are pulled out to form a makeshift meeting area where the Rainbows group frequently meets.

An old storage room within the boys locker room serves as an in-school suspension room on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays they have no one to monitor these students, so to maintain an in-school suspension throughout the week, Ross said they have to house these students within their administration offices. Ross said three secretaries located outside the private administration offices had to sacrifice their space so in-school suspension could be enforced five days a week.

Ross said additional administrative sacrifices had to be made when the assistant principal’s office became the Title 1 (extra reading assistance) room.

She has been extremely proud of how the faculty has adjusted to such cramped and inconsistent learning environments. Many teachers must resort to the teacher-on-a-cart routine, in which they stuff all their teaching supplies and anything else for their students on a transportable cart from classroom to classroom. In one particular classroom, a health teacher said in addition to the stress of having all her equipment on a small cart, she didn’t even have the luxury of using her main chalkboard because an enormous television/ VCR unit entirely blocked it.

Ross also said teachers don’t have the luxury of a teacher’s lounge because they willingly sacrificed it so that students with disabilities could have a private classroom to learn. Teachers now either resort to a table in the middle of the second-floor hallway with a refrigerator nearby, or simply eat their lunches in their classrooms when students go off to lunch in the cafeteria.

Ross said the cafeteria itself has become extremely overcrowded, with only four lunch periods to accommodate almost 200 students each. Ross said that’s why the controversial second kitchen had to be installed within the girls’ old locker room because they didn’t have enough room or utilities in one room to serve over 800 students within a short span of time.

The lack of classrooms during various aptitude testing periods has forced TPI (Transitional Program of Institution) students to sacrifice their classroom within the library so these tests can be administered, Ross said. TPI students therefore are forced to conduct class in the middle of the library, that on Feb. 28, also was the site of the school’s book fair.

In what once was the shop room, band and orchestra lessons share a room that includes the music teachers’ office. Inside the office, strings lessons are conducted during which time the noise easily filters out into the larger band room causing much confusion during lessons.

Ross said the problems have gotten so bad that she oftentimes finds herself searching for every alternative to clear up cluttered classrooms and make room for other programs.

“I’m struggling with how to use space in our hallways to make room inside classrooms,” Ross said. “We’re scrambling for ways to accommodate the steady growth of students.”

Within the referendum plan and with additional TIFF funding to support the needs outlined within the teacher surveys, Clinton Rosette would look first and foremost in terms of additions to create new boys and girls locker rooms, and also offices for the physical education department.

Renovations would include improving the administrative offices and the music rooms to achieve more space for both. Within the classrooms, the air conditioning and heating systems would be improved, and science rooms would be upgraded to meet the needs of today’s technology. Also, the school would look at installing large individual lockers for students.

The school would also install a handicapped access ramp because of the ever-growing need for some students to have an easier route entering the school.