Trent School Renovation Starts In August First- And Second-Graders Will Go To Skyview Elementary Next Year

Renovation plans for Trent Elementary are developing nicely - everything from how to bring daylight into a library with no exterior walls, to just what to do with the 400-plus students next year.

“I’m so tickled with this,” said Principal Shelley Harding. “It’s all going so well.”

Where will students go? Trent’s first- and second-graders and their teachers will be at Skyview Elementary next year. Construction there over the summer will add eight new classrooms. The Trent students will occupy seven of those rooms.

Construction at the aging school on Pines Road is budgeted to cost $5.3 million. Work will start in August and will be done in two phases to allow safe housing of the remaining students.

Ten classes will stay at Trent, occupying rooms in the south half of the school during the first several months of the school year, and moving by spring break into the completed north end of the school.

“The bulk of the changes will be on the north side of building, including a new kitchen,” Harding said.

One visible change at Trent will be a bus loop behind the building, so that school buses drop off students at a new entrance at the rear of the building. The front entrance, which will be remodeled to include handicapped access, will be where parents should drop off students.

The school, which was built in stages starting in the 1940s, will also gain six classrooms. The district anticipates growth at Trent of 100 students over the next five years, putting enrollment at 550 students.

Trent is an E-shaped building. The open space between wings on the north end will be filled in, to become the new library. A skylight will provide daylight there. The technology center will be adjacent.

The open space on the south end will become a courtyard. State money, which the district has counted on for some of the construction cost, is not available for new construction.

Trent’s office has been a concern in recent years because its configuration doesn’t allow any view of the main entrance. That will change, with the main office moving into what is now the library, which offers views of both the front entrance and the rear bus entrance.

The public will not have use of two of the school’s facilities next year: the gymnasium and the auditorium.

The auditorium seats 600 people and is the largest in the Valley. “I know it will be missed,” Harding said.

Other East Valley schools are slated for construction, as well.

East Valley and Mountain View middle schools will gain two new classrooms each. Construction work at the middle schools is expected to start in April.

East Farms Elementary will gain four new classrooms; construction there is expected to start in March.

Construction in East Valley High School’s shop and theater/music facilities is due to begin in June.

, DataTimes