Saturday, March 31, 2001

By Steve Liewer, Yokosuka bureau chief

Jason Carter / Stars and Stripes The new Junior High office building at Yokosuka.

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — After years of unwanted togetherness, Yokosuka Middle School and Kinnick High School finally are breaking up.

Late last week, Yokosuka Middle School administrators and counselors packed up their offices and moved from the cramped quarters they shared with their Kinnick brethren into a $350,000 temporary building next door to the seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms.

Monday morning, middle school officials will open for business in their new digs. High school counselors and other administrators will move into the vacated offices.

"We’re just so happy it’s here," said Yokosuka Middle School Principal Lesley Dunkle. "It’s going to be a big step toward us being seen by the community as a separate school."

Administrators had hoped to move into the new building shortly after school started last fall, but construction was delayed. A new eighth-grade classroom building opened last November, allowing the school to move all but certain specialized classesoff the adjacent Kinnick High campus.

For years, Yokosuka had no middle school; students from grades seven through 12 attended Kinnick. Three years ago, that began to change. Sixth graders were moved from The Sullivans Elementary School, and the faculties and class schedules were split. In keeping with current educational philosophy, administrators thought it best to separate 12- to 14-year-olds from more mature high schoolers.

Rampant growth also has squeezed the two schools, which have nearly doubled their combined enrollment in the past 10 years. Dunkle said 705 youngsters now attend Yokosuka Middle — 15 fewer than when the school year started, but 45 more than a year ago. Projections indicate the growth is flattening out, and the school’s population should increase only between 1 percent to 3 percent in the next several years.

Still, about eight teachers at the two schools do not have classrooms. Dunkle said that problem should end when the middle school’s new permanent building is built at Briggs Bay, not far from the current campus.

She said the Japanese government has awarded construction contracts for the new school, but ground-breaking has been delayed from February to May, and the expected opening date delayed from August 2002 to February 2003.

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