Home Work Program At Rogers Gives Students Practical Experience By Restorying Apartment Units

In the mind of Renee Barton, Room 309 in the Martindale Apartment complex becomes a sky-blue retreat. Color transforms the walls, now lumpy with patches of Spackle. New vinyl flooring covers dirty, scratched wood. A small roll of donated carpet erases the room’s squalid past.

Thanks to Barton and her hard-working classmates at Rogers High School, Apartment 309 will soon look much like her vision. And then it will become someone’s new home.

“I think it will look really nice,” said Barton, a sophomore. “I like that we get to help people find a nice place to live.”

Rogers students in two occupational studies classes, which teach skills for a smooth transition from school to work, have “adopted” two apartments at the building that was once Hillyard High School. For about nine weeks, they have been making weekly visits to the apartments and are determined to transform the apartments from ghastly to great.

The idea came from Spokane School District 81’s social worker Jeanne Thies, who heard about a community push to fix up the Martindale Apartments. She knew teacher Adam Bogle was looking for an off-campus project for his students and thought it might be a good fit.

Bogle and his students agree that it is. Students are excited about helping the community as they learn practical skills. Bogle is thrilled with the chance for hands-on learning.

“We can talk about work safety and eye protection, but when they get out here and start sawing and wood is flying, then they really understand,” said Bogle, who has experience as a contractor. “It reinforces the academic skills learned in class.”

Things like being able to measure in sixteenths of an inch don’t mean much in a classroom, he noted, but they become very important when students have to cut plywood that fits exactly around pipes in a kitchen.

With Rogers High itself undergoing a remodeling project, classes run on a block schedule. That makes occupational studies classes three and a half hours long. That’s plenty of time to get things done.

Each week, Bogle’s students take the city bus about a dozen blocks up Wellesley, then walk a few more blocks to the apartments at 5313 N. Regal. They hike up the stairs through minty green halls to the third floor, where some of them change into coveralls. Then Bogle briefs them on their project for the day: scrubbing, patching, measuring or cutting.

Since starting in on the apartment, ninth-grader Brandon Bushy has given new life to a rusty, leaking toilet. He’s gotten down on his knees to rip out rotten wood and scrape at peeling paint.

“It’s fun well, not really washing the walls, but it’s fun to learn things like laying tile, so you can get a job,” he said.

Jeremy Smith, 15, spent about an hour last week spreading joint compound over seams where there was once a doorway. He thinks it was time well spent.

“This is a good project because we’re helping out the neighborhood,” he said. “It helps homeless people, too, because this is like low-income housing.”

Built in 1912 as Hillyard High School, the building was closed when its student body got too big. The school graduated its largest class — 86 students — just before closing its doors in 1931. Rogers High School opened the following year.

After standing vacant for more than a decade, the building was leased by the federal government and converted to apartments during World War II. A private party bought it in 1959 for $90,500.

Since then, the building slowly started showing signs of neglect. Broken windows stayed broken. Dirt coated walls and trash littered hallways. Drug dealers and users skulked through the building while others looked the other way.

About a year ago, neighborhood resource officer Bonnie Sherar noticed the Martindale consistently topped her list of calls for police help. She teamed up with AmeriCorps*VISTA worker Marian Taylor to figure out how to help.

So far, community and tenant efforts have renovated 12 of the 52 apartments. Donations of paint, carpet, vinyl flooring, furniture and money have poured in from local business and people wanting to preserve a bit of Hillyard history.

But progress is not only measured in new coats of paint.

“We went from 15 to 18 calls a month (from the Martindale) a year ago to four last month. It’s exciting,” Sherar said. “Now people are talking to each other. A year ago they didn’t do that because they didn’t know who the evil ones were.”

Now Apartment 309 is scattered with boxes of work gloves, sponges and tape measures. Tubes of silicone stand like tiny rockets on top of a mustard-colored refrigerator. Sheets of sandpaper and canisters of Ajax cleanser wait, at the ready. There is still a lot to do.

But when they look around their adopted apartments, Rogers students see nice places to live.

“If our vision can be fulfilled,” Bogle said, “it will be an unbelievable before-and-after project for the kids.”

And for the Martindale residents.