Franklin Regional to renovate libraries with donation, foundation grant
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Franklin Regional Senior High School librarian Wade Burtch wants his library to be anything but a static space.
“A high school building is already a pretty rigid environment, and one of the things (high school Principal) Ron Suvak and I talked about was making the library a place where students can relax a little and focus on their studies,” he said.
With that in mind, FR officials are using a sizable donation from a former administrator, John Swacus, and a $32,000 Grable Foundation grant to help renovate the high school and middle school libraries and create a more flexible, dynamic space for students to collaborate.
“We’ve focused a lot on what we’re calling ‘FRever Skills,’ ” said high school Assistant Principal Casey Miskimmin-Pope. “Things like communication and collaboration, and in order to really be able to offer our students the opportunities that come along with these life skills, we need a facility that will be able to do that.”
The renovated high school library will be filled with a combination of movable soft seating and five-student tables that can disconnect and re-combine in different configurations to accommodate a larger or smaller group.
“The tables can be easily moved, and they can be folded up and pushed to the side,” Burtch said.
The renovated library also will be home to the Panther Café, a mobile school store cart run in parallel with the district’s life-skills program.
“This will be a full cafe where students can enjoy beverages in a safe space,” Pope said. “We’ll have a combination of students working together at the coffee shop and store.”
Miskimmin-Pope said she hopes the new library space can help impart the “five C’s” that form the backbone of “FRever Skills” — communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and citizenship.
“We want to focus on what our students will need when they leave FR,” she said. “There are a lot of companies empowering their employees to make choices that benefit their work ethic. We want to offer a flexible space without the rigidity of a traditional classroom setup.”
A similar style of furniture will be purchased for use in the Franklin Regional Middle School library, offering the flexibility to reconfigure the room as needed to accommodate different types of student collaboration.
Burtch was quick to point out that there will still be plenty of books.
“We’re not planning to get rid of a bunch of books,” he said. “But if you think about reference material, that works better online — it’s cheaper, and it updates constantly, so something like an encyclopedia is not going to be in libraries much anymore. Same with periodicals — we purchase database subscriptions, and students can search newspapers all over the world.”
Even with the popularity of e-books, Burtch said, “print books are not going away. I think we’ve just sort of gotten away from having the library be a museum of books that haven’t been checked out in 30 years.”
The bulk of renovation is expected to take place in the fall. Burtch said he hopes the library will be able to remain partially open during most of the work, and is excited for the future possibilities.
“The school day is hectic,” he said. “Kids need a landing spot, a place they can come, relax and enjoy the peace for a moment.”