Jefferson Jamboree Celebrates School Renovations
If you got caught in traffic or couldn’t find a place to park on the Southside last night between 5:00 and 7:00 chalk it up to the rush hours of school spirit at Jefferson Elementary Traditional School (JETS).
The occasion was a combination of the school’s annual jamboree with an open house to celebrate the renovations that have been going on since last spring and are nearly completed.
Principal Mary Minard said there are 432 students at Jefferson this year and if they’d been taking attendance at the party there surely wouldn’t have been many absentees. The building, the grounds – the whole neighborhood were crawling with JETS of all ages. “We have lots of multi-generational Jefferson families,” Minard said. “I think there are a lot of alums coming back to see what’s been done.”
What’s been done is a physical makeover that will now house one of the district’s two traditional elementary curriculums, along with Phillips, in a thoroughly 21st century physical space.
Ninety-two new doors were installed, 200 tons of demolition waste was removed, 3,800 square feet of wall tiles installed, 4,800 square feet of space were added along with 5.8 miles of geothermal wells and lots of safety and security updates. Classrooms were equipped with wireless sound enhancements. By the time they finished cleaning up after the bash that waste removal tonnage might have to be changed to 201. They went through an awful lot of burgers, hot dogs and popcorn last night. Besides chow there were inflatable slides and trampolines and balloon animals outside. And inside there was a book fair and a basket auction with enough inventory to line all of the interior walls. Proceeds from the auction will benefit the Jefferson PTA.
No doubt the geothermal wells will do as efficient a job of heating the new and improved Jefferson throughout the coming winters as they’re doing at all of the other DMPS sites where they’ve been installed. Still, if there was a way they could somehow channel all that JETS school spirit – what a powerful, renewable source of energy that is. Last night they tapped into a gusher.
