Monday, more than 10 UF and P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School officials lined up on grounds south of Tumblin Creek. Each wore a suit or dress, but they all donned white construction hats and sank their shovels into the dirt anyway.
More than 100 people attended the groundbreaking ceremony, which marked the first day of construction for P.K. Yonge’s new middle and high school facility. The building will be completed in December 2020.
The $28 million project includes a three-story-high building with eight science and engineering labs, said P.K. Yonge Director Lynda Hayes. Three old buildings will also be torn down.
Funding for the project came from the state, private donors and UF, as P.K. Yonge is affiliated with the university. Its job as a research school is to is to “design, test and share innovations to help form the future of K-12 education,” Hayes said – which is exactly what the new building is designed to do.
The facility will have an unorthodox open-floor plan to encourage student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions, said Principal Carrie Geiger.
“When you think about a traditional school with square classrooms and one teacher in a space, that's the antithesis of what this new design looks like. You have students in various spaces doing various activities,” Geiger said. “It's a new model of education and teaching.”
The new building is also part of P.K. Yonge’s long-term plan to modernize. The school built a new elementary school featuring a similar open-floor plan in 2011, Hayes said. Many of the school’s buildings are from the 1950s and have problems with electrical wiring, which makes it more efficient to build new facilities than to renovate.
Middle and high school students are currently spread out through 33 “wings” of classrooms that aren’t connected to a single building. In the future, P.K. Yonge wants to tear them down to provide more grass for students to play and study in, Geiger said.
“We'll have a lot more green space, a campus that has a much smaller environmental footprint,” she said.
