When the new T.A. Brown Elementary School campus opened Jan. 8, students walked in through a new entryway, took a left by the new “learning stairs”—a communal space with multicolored stairs and a pull-down screen—and walked down the hall to a celebration ceremony in the cafeteria, where there is a new demonstration kitchen where they will be able to learn about sustainable food.
The new amenities are examples of “modernized” school campuses, and 18 more are scheduled to open within the next few years. For nearly half of those students walking into the new building—about 250 of the 520, according to Principal Veronica Sharp—it was their first time attending classes in anything but a portable structure.
T.A. Brown closed suddenly and indefinitely in 2016 after extensive damage was found to the school’s concrete floor beneath classrooms, the cafeteria and administrative offices. Students, teachers and staff bounced around, first to Reilly Elementary School and the Allen Elementary School campus, then to portable sites at Barrington Elementary School and Webb Primary School.
When the new $30.8 million T.A. Brown campus opened this year, Webb Primary’s community merged with T.A. Brown’s. Petra Ocampo, a first-grade teacher who started this year at T.A. Brown after seven years at Webb Primary School, said tasks as simple as moving from place to place were tricky in the portables on a rainy day.
