Heber’s new school in the works, will be K-3 school

HEBER — Hard hats and hammers and raining sawdust filled the site of the new school construction site here Friday.

The new school on Dogwood Road in Heber, aptly named Dogwood Elementary, will split the existing kindergarten-through-eighth grade students at the current Heber School site down the middle. The new K-3 school will house just about 590 students while the remainder of the more than 1,100 students in grades 4-8 will remain at Heber School.

Construction on the new site is expected to be completed by November. Also, the new buildings on the current Heber School site will include a science lab, three classrooms, two student restrooms and a new district office. The new buildings at Heber School will be completed by Heber’s first day of school, Aug. 23.

“We’re planning a mid-year transition for students on January 2011,” Heber School District Superintendent Jaime Silva said. “We already have a principal for that school. We’re very excited about this.”

Silva said the school will consist of 28 classrooms, four pods — each pod consists of six classrooms with teacher workrooms between sets of three — a multi-purpose room, computer lab, library, outdoor activity areas and a parent training center.

The new 15-acre school will also include large parking lots, with separate parent and staff parking, while the design of main, front buildings are something unique to the Valley, Silva said.

This is the first new school in the Heber district since its establishment on July 3, 1908, Silva said.

“I went to this school in the 1960s and there were only nine classrooms, but of course the community has grown a lot since then,” he said. “We’re kind of making history here.”

Silva said this new school is at least 10 years in the making at Heber. Part of the delay, he said, was the state budget crisis and the cuts made to education.

“The state froze all funding for new construction around 2007,” Silva said. “We were already approved, we were going to receive the funds and then the state sent me a letter saying we weren’t going to get the funds. That lasted about a year and a half.”

Yet despite the financial difficulties and in light of the pending completion of the project, Silva was able to turn a negative into a positive.

“Had we built this two or three years ago we would have only been able to build three-quarters of it,” Silva said, noting that the significant drop in property values aided the district in getting the full site built.

Heber School Principal Patty Marcial agreed with Silva’s positive insight and impression of the buildings being erected.

“The front is what gives the appealing look to (the school),” she said. “I think people will be very pleased when they see it.

“For the community of Heber I think its going to set the standard,” she said.