Dist. 200 preparing to raise curtain on new Hubble Middle School

A modern, more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly Hubble Middle School is poised to open its doors in Warrenville.

Roughly 850 students will start the school year Aug. 25 at the 190,000-square-foot facility, which is the culmination of 16 months of construction and more than five years of often heated debate about whether the old Hubble should have been renovated,

For Principal Beth Sullivan, the transition from the 84-year-old former high school building in downtown Wheaton to Hubble's new home on roughly 18 acres at 3S600 Herrick Road has been bittersweet.

"I think any time a community closes a school there's a sense of loss," said Sullivan, who has been Hubble's principal for seven years. "By the same token, this is a beautiful school and taxpayers made it happen."

Indeed, voters in February 2008 gave Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 the OK to proceed with the $58 million project. Construction started two months later.

School board President Andy Johnson recently got the opportunity to tour the school and says he's pleased with the result.

"It's wonderful," Johnson said. "Everything has come together exactly as the architects and the designers had planned it. It's a thing of beauty. The whole community will be very proud and very pleased for many, many years to come."

Even though the new Hubble is smaller than its predecessor, Johnson said it has one big advantage: It was designed and built to be a middle school.

A facility group of about 15 staff members - including teachers, secretaries and custodians - offered suggestions about what should go into District 200's first new building in eight years.

The result was space tailor-made to meet current and future program needs.

Hubble's three-story classroom wing on the south end of the building includes two science labs per floor, an art room and library learning center. Classrooms are equipped with whiteboards and ceiling-mounted projectors. And with the increased use of portable SMART Boards, there's no need for old-fashioned chalkboards. In fact, there's only one chalkboard in the entire school - and it was installed at a teacher's request.

Even hallway space is put to good use. Lockers are limited to one side of the hall so chairs and tables can be placed on the other side. The "extended classroom" areas can be used by students working on group projects.

In a nod to the old Hubble, stone reliefs that were once located on the exterior of that structure have been incorporated into the interior of the new building, including one by the entrance of the library.

On the other north side of a glass-enclosed bridge, the one-story main section of the building contains offices, a 500-seat auditorium, two gymnasiums, a fitness center and separate classrooms for drama, chorus, band and orchestra.

One complaint about the old Hubble was that it cost a lot of money to maintain. The price of heating and cooling that building is the same as heating and cooling one of the district's much larger high schools.

The new Hubble is built to meet the leadership in energy and environmental design standards established by U.S. Green Building Council.

For example, classrooms are designed to "harvest daylight," thanks to multiple energy-efficient windows. Even the music rooms, which are windowless, have giant skylights.

"If you use that natural daylight, then you don't have to pay to keep your lights on," said Sullivan, adding that classrooms are equipped with sensors that dim or brighten the lights based on the amount of sunlight in a room.

The push to conserve energy made it to the top of the building, which has a reflective "cool" roof and a section of roof that will be covered with trays of native grass. Overall, the mechanical systems will be 20 percent more efficient than standard systems and the plumbing is designed to reduce water consumption by 30 percent.

"When you throw in all the efficiencies, it's definitely going to save money (on operating costs)," said Bill Farley, District 200's assistant superintendent of business operations.

Outside, the wooded surroundings are far different from Hubble's old location.

"When you think about it, Hubble kids are used to hearing hundreds of cars go by," Farley said. "Standing outside here it's very quiet."

A field will provide enough space for two full-sized standard soccer fields. And Warrenville Park District is going to install an area with outdoor cardio equipment.

The new layout also gave officials the ability to address the parent drop-off problems that existed at the old Hubble.

"We could never keep cars and buses split," Sullivan said. "So we would have four or five big buses and cars in between. Everybody was literally trying to dump at that same door."

Now there is a separate area on the north side of the building where parents can drop off their kids. Only buses will be allowed to use the circular drive near the main entrance.

With the start of school a week away, Sullivan said she's looking forward to seeing children and their parents walk through Hubble's halls for the first time.

"For a lot of people, when you see a plan or a blueprint, you don't really get the full effect until you actually see what it looks like," she said. "Pictures and renderings don't do (the building) justice. It's gorgeous."

And with an open house planned for Sept. 13, members of the community will get the chance to tour the building and make their own judgments.

"We'll have it all spiffed up by then," Sullivan joked. "We'll even know how to turn the lights on and off."

<p class="factboxheadblack">Hubble by the numbers</p> <p class="News">100: Pencil sharpeners</p> <p class="News">90: Fire extinguishers</p> <p class="News">100: Clocks</p> <p class="News">2,000: Light fixtures</p> <p class="News">117,000: Square feet of roof</p> <p class="News">300: Doors</p> <p class="News">100: American flags</p> <p class="News">1,066: Tons of steel</p> <p class="News">163,122: Bricks</p> <p class="News">260,000: Concrete blocks</p> <p class="News">5.3: If Principal Beth Sullivan stood on her own shoulders 5.3 times, it would equal the height of the main gymnasium.</p>