Grafenwöhr school liaison officer Steve Vojtecky and Grafenwöhr Middle School deputy principal Barbara Hooker on Thursday stand inside one of 31 temporary classrooms that make up the middle school. (Seth Robson / S&S)
GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Workers are putting the finishing touches on a temporary middle school that will serve more than 300 students this year.
From the outside, the school — on track to open Aug. 28 — looks like a collection of shipping containers similar to the sort of buildings soldiers live in at some of the better bases in Iraq.
But inside, it feels like an ordinary school. Average-sized, well-lit classrooms are linked by wide hallways that already have colored cardboard signs on the walls listing teachers’ names and subjects, such as art, health and science.
Grafenwöhr school liaison officer Steve Vojtecky said Thursday that the school, which has 31 classrooms split into five blocks, will serve grades six through eight.
The classrooms surround a central administrative block that houses toilets, a staff room and offices for the principal, nurse and counselor.
At one end of the school, there is an old wooden gymnasium that the students will use for physical education. At the other end is a large concrete building that used to house an Army and Air Force Exchange Service food court and a Taco Bell restaurant. That will serve as the school’s cafeteria and practice room for the school band, Vojtecky said.
Workers are busy laying asphalt for a parking lot on a softball field nearby — which would have been ideal for the school. But the new principal, Mary Zimmerman-Bayer, formerly the Grafenwöhr Elementary School principal, said there would be plenty of physical activities for students and that they also would use outdoor sports facilities at other parts of the post.
Much progress has been made since plans for the school were outlined in May, Zimmerman-Bayer said.
“The buildings started to be delivered at the end of June. Now they have been assembled and furniture is being delivered. We are almost ready to go,” she said.
School lockers are waiting to be installed inside the buildings. But many of the classrooms already have desks, chairs and audio-visual equipment in place.
Zimmerman-Bayer said furniture is coming from three schools: Kitzingen and Iceland, which have closed, and Würzburg, which is downsizing.
“We have hundreds of computers. We are trying to figure out where to put them all,” she said.
The school will have 35 teachers, and also will share some specialty teachers, such as for art and music, with nearby Grafenwöhr Elementary, Zimmerman-Bayer said.
The new school’s deputy principal, Barbara Hooker, was deputy principal at Würzburg High School last year. Würzburg’s expected enrollment is down from about 600 students last year to around 300 this year with the departure of the 1st Infantry Division and various other units from the base this year, she said.
Hooker said she was happy to move to Grafenwöhr.
“I’m a country girl, so I love it out here,” said the Charleston, S.C., native.
