JULY 29, 2010 ISSUE
New High School Offers New Experiences
The new auditorium incorporates 200 lights and will seat 706 viewers. The old auditorium sat roughly 385. Photo by Edward Sztukowski
The expanded stadium will seat 4,713 fans. The fields are surfaced with turf, which will better withstand the frequent inclement weather Watauga endures during the fall and winter months.
The main gym (above) at Watauga will seat around 1,446 fans, and a smaller auxiliary gym has a seating capacity of 192. Having two gyms will provide greater access to the school’s basketball, volleyball and wrestling teams.
This space will soon be filled with tables and students dining. This unique, open area will feature wireless internet access and become a central location for students to meet and eat.
The Watauga High School Media Center will give students the ability to congregate to utilize the wi-fi at the school. Faculty and staff hope the new center will experience the rise in popularity ASU’s library received after opening it's new location. Photo by Edward SztukowskiWith the end of summer swiftly approaching, students are preparing for their return to school. But for students at Watauga High School, the return will be a unique experience because of the opening of the newly constructed school.
With new facilities comes new equipment, and updated areas of the school. Here is a look at some select areas of the school to see how things might be different this coming school year.
Theater
The new school building greatly expands upon the artistic experience previously found at the old high school with an auditorium that has roughly doubled in size.
The old Watauga High School auditorium sat 385 people, while the new auditorium seats 706.
“What we are just so pleased that this is really going to reflect the quality and the caliber of the performing arts students in Watauga County,” said Sarah Miller, Watauga High School drama teacher.
The expanded auditorium has 200 lights to create entirely different moods. The old theater had 55.
“What this will allow us to do is continue to grow our work and continue to offer what we think is pretty high quality work on a much more massive and technically-worthy scale,” Miller said.
Other changes include a bigger stage, more side lighting, more sound equipment, greater handicapped accessibility and a scrim. A scrim is a large piece of fabric that can have lights projected on it to set moods.
“This will be exceptional technical training for our students, and exceptional for our actors, so that they can be treated in the manner that professional actors [are treated],” Miller said.
In addition to new technological aspects of the auditorium, the acoustics have been enhanced with acoustic tiling, which resembles waves on the ceiling.
A loading dock will help drama and orchestra students to bring in new equipment easier, something that did not exist at the old school.
Miller said the first performance at the new auditorium should be in October.
Media Center
A library without walls—that's the plan for the new media center at Watauga High School, which would have been called a library in the past.
The media center is available for students to check out books, but its focus is shifting more toward electronic access.
Chairs and comfortable seating are at the heart of the media center to take advantage of the one-to-one initiative, which will provide each student with a Dell laptop to use.
“We're moving to a new building, isn't this a good time to transition to kind of a new way of doing things?” Media Coordinator Trudy Moss said. “We're hoping our usage will increase like ASUs has. That library over there is a happening place.”
Because the new high school has wi-fi, students will be able to connect to the media center's catalog.
The new media center contains two conferences rooms, administrative areas and a separate area for production, which includes laminators and poster cutters.
The media center is hoping to concentrate on digital conversion. It's even possible that the center may receive some Kindles next year, which is Amazon's e-book reader.
The role of the librarian is changing, and the new area makes that apparent, media specialist Judy Brown said.
Gyms and Fields
The spirit of the Pioneer lives on in the new high school as well. All new facilities and fields means teams and fans alike will be able to experience athletics in a different way at Watauga High School.
The school houses a main gym and an auxiliary gym, which seats 1,446 and 192, respectively. The bleachers have been painted blue, with WHS written across them.
“We're really excited to get in a new facility,” Athletics Director Tom Wright said.
The gyms will utilize new sound systems, as well as new scoreboards.
“Everything's new,” Wright said. “We're working right now on a scores table. We're really excited about this gym.”
Bleachers in the auxiliary gym will allow two indoor games to be played at the same time.
In addition to the two gyms, two fields, fully turfed, will be available to athletes. One field will be strictly for football and soccer, while the other one will be dedicated for lacrosse and soccer.
“Because of our weather situation, our situation just screams for turf,” Wright said. “With this field turf, we're not going to have to worry about it raining, getting muddy and messing the field up.”
The new stadium will seat around 4,713 fans, with roughly 3,500 fans on the home side of the field.
“We really appreciate how the county commissioners and the school board stepped up to turf the field,” Wright said.
“Our old facility was a good facility, don't get me wrong,” he said. “We really appreciated the upgrade to play at home, but the new facility is good, too.”
Cafeteria
Gone are the days of filing into the cafeteria at Watauga High School. The new commons area at the school will double as a cafeteria, giving students a central location to meet and eat.
But that's not the only new aspect of the cafeteria.
“We'll be launching new a la carte menu items...and more seasonal type menus,” Watauga County School Child Nutrition Director Nicole Mayernik said.
The plan is to keep the menu as fresh as possible and give as much variety to students as possible. This includes more vegetarian options, which Mayernik said were less available at the old school.
“We found this year that a lot of vegetarian students weren't being served,” Mayernik said. “We're doing almost what you could call a food revolution in the schools.”
Mayernik said the new facility gives the perfect opportunity to launch new items and features, like a coffee and tea bar.
“We want students to know that they do have a voice in the cafeteria,” she said. “Our menu is basically designed from their feedback from this previous year.”
Mayernik said despite statewide budget cuts, the cafeteria wants to focus on quality, and that they wanted to provide as much variety of different foods as possible.
Other possible additions to the cafeteria could be a dollar menu with yogurt and granola cups and also fruit cups.
Additional kitchen equipment in the back of the house will allow the cafeteria workers to provide a quality dining experience for students.
Students can look forward to checking out all the new features of the high school on the first official day of school on August 11. Until then, the construction crews are hard at work finishing up what will soon be the High Country's premiere high school.
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