Visitors to Brookside Education Center Thursday were impressed the range of programs offered at the building, said Curriculum Director Judy Knudtson.

Friday, October 12, 2001

Visitors to Brookside Education Center Thursday were impressed the range of programs offered at the building, said Curriculum Director Judy Knudtson.

&uot;We had a good steady crowd of visitors – enough to eat 23 pizzas,&uot; she said. &uot;I think they liked what they saw. It opened a lot of eyes.&uot;

Since the building closed as a middle school two years ago, the district has slowly relocated alternative and support programs to utilize the space.

According to Knudtson, the following programs have office and classroom space in Brookside:

— District offices – Formerly at the old high school, the district administrative offices are now at Brookside. This area includes the superintendent’s office, curriculum office, finance office and all bookkeeping operations, buildings and grounds and transportation. Along with administrative offices, the district mailroom and school board meeting room are in the building along with the district mainframe and archives.

— District Technology support – This includes the &uot;head end&uot; room, which contains the district network technology, plus repair facilities for computers and audio-visual equipment. Both of these areas were also at the old high school.

— Community Education – This separately funded program includes programs such as Adult Basic Education, Adult English as a Second Language classes, GED testing and Even Start Family Literacy. The Community Education Computer Lab is also at Brookside as well as the Youth Service/Youth Development programs.

— Albert Lea Community Child Care Center – This agency has a satellite infant and toddler day care center at Brookside, taking care of children from other programs and/or staff on their regular fee-based structure. A grant was used to purchase their equipment for this site as well as to help pay for the personnel here until the program became self-sustaining.

— HeadStart – Leasing a newly remodeled space in the building, this federal preschool education agency recently relocated from their classrooms and offices on Bridge Street. HeadStart also moved their playground equipment to Brookside, which it is sharing with other programs for preschoolers.

— Early Childhood Special Education – This department has two classrooms and their teachers’ offices at Brookside. It used to be housed at Halverson Elementary, but more classrooms were needed at the school for sixth-graders.

— Adult Learning Center – The Middle Level (grades 7,8 and 9) and the high school level (grades 9-12) programs and offices of the Area Learning Center are housed on the second floor. These 10 classrooms were formerly on the third floor, section blue, of the old high school. This space also offers all the secondary summer school programs and tutoring services.

— Special Services – Brookside houses several program offices in this department including Title I coordinator, the special education coordinator and director, hearing and vision impaired staff, speech and language clinicians, school psychologists, the school nurse offices along with all special education records and archives.

— Staff training room and professional library – This room is used for the District Leadership team meetings, new teacher mentoring classes, graduate classes offered through other universities and other district staff development programs.

— Student computer lab and media center- The lab and media center are made up of mostly books and computers that the other 6 media centers didn’t want or couldn’t keep or were duplicates. This facility also orders, receives and catalogues all the books for the 4 elementary buildings.

— Motorcycle testing track – The Brookside parking lot is now the home of the state patrol’s motorcycle testing track, which used to be at Hammer Field.

— Storage and workshop – The school district’s electrician and maintenance workers’ workshop is now at Brookside. In addition, extra equipment such as desks, file cabinets, and other furniture is stored in the building until needed.

— Gymnasium and cafeteria – Both of these facilities are still in use on a daily basis serving programs at Brookside along with athletic practices from other schools in the district.

Closing Brookside as a middle school saved the district about $500,000, Knudtson said. But the shuffling of programs has kept Brookside as an integral part of the district with more than 75 adults working each week with 400 students of all ages.

Brookside will continue to expand its offerings next year when the remainder of the Ramsey Center preschool programs moves to the building, Knudtson said.