Agricultural Center Open House on September 15
The new Bartlesville Agricultural Center will have a free public Open House on Sunday, September 15, 2024 from 2 to 3 p.m. Everyone is invited to come tour the new arena, classrooms, animal barns, and greenhouses on Shawnee/Jim Bohnsack Avenue just south of 18th Street.
Wayside Expansion and Renovations Open
The 12-classroom addition at Wayside Elementary opened with the new school year along with interior renovations. The new wing has ten early childhood classrooms, art and music rooms, and restrooms. Below is a shot of one of the new early childhood classrooms.
Each of the ten new early childhood classrooms is hardened for stormy weather and includes a secure storm window cover. Together, the ten classrooms form an all-school refuge area.
Another welcome feature of each new early childhood classroom is its own dedicated restroom.
Added corridors now link each wing of the school to improve traffic flow, the cafeteria dining area has been enlarged where all students can now enjoy free breakfast and lunch, and the former library is now two classrooms. One of the former early childhood pods is now the library, which was so new that boxes were still being unpacked when the shot below was taken.
There is a new conference room by the new library, and the other former early childhood pod has been transformed into spacious offices, a teacher workroom, and another conference room.
The expansion and renovation project at Wayside has given it the capacity for five classrooms for each grade level from Pre-Kindergarten through Fifth Grade. Three additional grade level teachers have been added for the 2024-2025 academic year, and in recent years the school added a second physical education teacher, a second counselor, a special education teacher, a third secretary, a second AIMS assistant, a full-time nurse, a full-time library assistant, and a school resource officer.
There will be an Open House for the public at Wayside at a future date, after everyone has a chance to settle in to their new or renovated spaces.
New Electronic Marquee Signs at Most Schools
Bartlesville High School upgraded to an electronic marquee sign years ago, and the Richard Kane and Wilson elementary schools gained new signs last year as part of their front additions. Now electronic marquee signs are replacing the old exterior letterboards at the remaining schools: Wayside, Ranch Heights, Hoover, Jane Phillips, Central, and Madison. Below is a shot of the vintage letterboard at Wayside and the new marquee sign that will soon take over its duties.
Ranch Heights Expansion Project Underway
Ranch Heights is a sister school to Wayside. Both were originally built in the late 1950s by the Limestone School District, which was annexed into Bartlesville Public Schools in 1962. An expansion and renovation project has now begun at Ranch Heights, with dirtwork underway on the west side of the campus. The changes to come are almost identical to those now completed at Wayside.
The Ranch Heights project also has a new wing with ten early childhood classrooms, new music and art classrooms, and additional restrooms. Its current library will also be remodeled into a couple of classrooms, and its current early childhood pods into a new library and new office and support spaces. One significant difference between the two schools is that the gymnasium wing at Ranch Heights includes classrooms on an upper floor, and the project at Ranch Heights includes adding an elevator to improve accessibility to those rooms.
Redistricting
The completion of the Ranch Heights project in the summer of 2025 will allow for redistricting of the attendance boundaries for the Ranch Heights, Wayside, Hoover, and Wilson elementary schools to address developing neighborhoods in their areas of the city. The currently planned changes would ease capacity issues at Wayside as the Park Place neighborhood builds out by ending the split of the Rolling Hills neighborhood across Wayside and Ranch Heights, returning all of it to the expanded Ranch Heights along with some adjoining housing additions. The plan also addresses the development of the Stone Branch and Prairie Ridge additions in far northeast Bartlesville, which are in the Wilson attendance area, by returning the area north of Pennington Hills and south of Tuxedo Boulevard to Hoover Elementary.
A high-resolution version of the planned boundary changes is available.
Progress as Promised
These facility improvements were made possible by the bond issues approved by voters in 2021 and 2023. Those same bond issues also provide continuing funding for the district's instructional technology, fine arts, athletics, and maintenance programs.
Thanks to the bond issues, the desktop computers at the middle schools and high schools were refreshed this summer, and those at the elementary schools will be refreshed in the summer of 2025 to ensure the district is ready for the end of support for the Windows 10 operating system in October 2025. In the summers of 2026 and 2027, the classroom ceiling projectors and electronic whiteboards in the middle schools and high school will be replaced with large touchscreen panels like those in all of our elementary school classrooms.
We have much to look forward to thanks to the ongoing support of our community.