BUILDING STRESSES IMPORTANCE OF SCIENCES

The $3.23 million Math and Science Building will open to students next month.

JACKSON -- The quarter-ton copper and stainless steel globe sculpture hanging in the lobby of the new Jackson High School Math and Science Building is meant to symbolize the importance of the knowledge students acquire within.

The lines of latitude and longitude made of tubing are accurate, as is the angle of the Earth's axis. At the school that produced astronaut Dr. Linda Godwin, the places math and science can take you are well understood. But the architect and Superintendent Howard Jones wanted to go further.

"We wanted to emphasize to the students as they entered the building dedicated to math and science that what they are taught here would control the fate of our globe," says architect John Dudley.

The untitled work by Perryville sculptor Roy Glass is the focus of a $3.23 million building that sets Jackson apart in the region in terms of teaching math and especially science. The two-story building contains seven combination classrooms and laboratories in addition to eight math classrooms and a spacious science/math technology center that will house as many as 35 computers.

Previously, a single laboratory served all Jackson High School chemistry and physics students.

"This building was badly needed," says first-year principal Rick McClard. It will open for the first time when school resumes the last week of August

The building is completely accessible for people with disabilities. Signs identifying each room also are printed in Braille.

The math and science building, the new South Elementary School on south Highway 25 and a 10-classroom addition at North Elementary School in Fruitland are being financed by a $7.8 million bond issue passed by voters two years ago.

The technology center will be open all day for use by various science and math classes and eventually will be used to teach other parts of the curriculum, such as social studies and English.

All the computers in the building will be networked and eventually will be networked with every building on campus. Students already have designed a home page for the school.

Every classroom is wired for computers and cable TV and also has the wiring for future expansion. "We have conduit everywhere," McClard says.

This will be important, he says, because the school's average class size of 350 students is expected to be 400 next year.

Many former graduates have dropped by to see the new building.

"This is something the whole community is proud of," McClard said.

Missing from the new school is something long associated with education: the chalkboard. The effect of chalk dust on allergies and computers has relegated chalkboards to the past. The new classrooms are equipped with wall-length white marker boards on three sides.

Carol Keen, who teaches trigonometry, math analysis and calculus, was arranging things in her new classroom Tuesday. She is excited about having more space, a computer hookup, an overhead projector with a calculator and plenty of electrical plug-ins.

"Our teachers are fired up," McClard said.

The school's administrative offices have also been moved to the new structure, which is a more central location on the seven-building campus. The landscaping has been done by students in the school's agriculture department.

The new building also will open up badly needed space next door in Building A. Corridors connect the two buildings on both floors.

The previous biology room will become a childhood development lab. The previous administrative offices will be used by the school's three counselors, who heretofore had been housed in an office McClard refers to as a closet. "In fact, it used to be a closet," he said.

Business and language classes will take over the old science and math classrooms. The additional space will mean no study halls will be held in the library, which now also will house a writing lab.

Business teachers will have their own classrooms for the first time.

McClard expects seniors to take over the new Math and Science Building in the morning before school starts. That's only natural since all the lockers in the facility are being assigned to seniors.

"We finally have enough lockers for everyone," he said.

McClard said longtime physics teacher Ed Seabaugh, whom Godwin has often credited for inspiring her interest in science, had considerable input into the design of the science labs in the new building. "He has developed our physics program," the principal said.

More than 50 percent of Jackson High School's 1,000 students are taking chemistry and physics, an unusually high percentage.

In trying to design a focus for the new building, Godwin's alma mater initially tried to acquire a piece of apparatus that had been in space but couldn't. The globe became the alternative.

Superintendent Jones says the globe further represents the balance between man and nature which is now tipped to the side of man.

"As we discussed the whole thing philosophically, we wondered how far that ought to tip -- man versus long-term protection of our environment," Jones said.

The sculpture underscores that math and science extends far beyond learning facts to include the ethical questions scientists must grapple with, Jones says.