North Davis contends with on-campus construction

PHOTO: With construction occupying most of the blacktop space, students must bike on a dirt path around caution taped cones to park their bikes in the racks relocated to the grass.

By Genna Olavarri,

BlueDevilHUB.com Editor-in-chief-

Students once again flood the blacktop at North Davis Elementary — playing nine square, tag and swinging on the monkey bars at recess. This year, however, the primary school students are sharing their playtime domain with a construction crew.

Back in 2018, Davis voters passed Measure M, a 150 million dollar bond measure funding construction projects to update Davis Joint Unified Schools. 

Now, almost three years later, several improvement projects are underway across the district. Those currently under construction include the Birch Lane, Cesar Chavez, Willet and North Davis Elementary Schools’ new multi-purpose rooms. 

“Our (current) MPR is small. It’s over 60 years old. It doesn’t have a full kitchen,” North Davis principal Sarah Roseen said. “Having the new MPR is going to be amazing.”

The building is expected to be complete by August 2022, which means the campus will be under construction for the remainder of the school year.

“This will be a year-long project so there really was no avoiding that,” Roseen said. “Of course COVID had plans too that we didn’t know about, so having it all happening at once is challenging.”

About two-thirds of the black top and one of the two play structures are fenced off, drastically minimizing the play area for students. 

“The first day we went out, they all… went straight towards the (open) play structure and oh my goodness. Six classes cannot fit on the one play structure,” said Sarah Eich, a second grade teacher at North Davis.

As a result, staff members have had to get creative in finding new things for students to do in lue of traditional recess activities. 

In an area with picnic tables dedicated to games and art, students can “play chess, checkers, (or) do some coloring pages,” Roseen said.

According to fifth grade teacher Karen Fingerman, the most frequent complaint she hears from her students regarding the restricted play area is just that they have “to wait to get into games because they don’t have as many, for instance, nine square courts,” Fingerman said. 

“But just (minor) complaints about where’s the ball wall? We don’t have a ball wall.’ We’ll get one, you know, eventually,” Fingerman said.

In general, students have expressed curiosity more than anything else.

“They’re kind of looking through the fence and checking out what’s happening (each day) and there was one day that there was this gigantic crane coming in while they were at lunch and they were just… watching it in rapture,” Eich said. 

Davis High senior Eitan Rosenheim is a peer tutor at North Davis for teacher Cammie Portello’s fourth grade class. He has noticed that students are not particularly phased by the construction.

“I feel like… because of the COVID year… it’s completely new to everyone, coming back to school. So I feel like it doesn’t have as big of an impact as it would during a regular year,” Rosenheim said.

Upcoming improvement projects from the bond program include the construction of the new DHS buildings. The aquatic center, along with the science, technology, engineering and math building are both set to begin construction sometime in 2022.