Revere reaching top of the Hill

REVERE – His hard hat has the date of the groundbreaking and the date of the first day of school of each of the new elementary schools built during his tenure.And in a few months, Superintendent Dr. Paul Dakin will complete the fifth entry, as the Staff Sgt. James J. Hill Elementary School is on schedule to open its doors in August.”It will be five of five,” Dakin said Monday while standing in the light-filled atrium of the mostly completed school. “The sixth will be Revere High School.”Dakin, Superintendent Dr. Dianne Kelly (whose term is overlapping with Dakin’s), City Planner Frank Stringi, Ward 4 Councilor Stephen Reardon and members of the construction team joined The Item on a tour of the Hill School Monday. The visit also provided an opportunity to see the adjacent newly renovated Harry Della Russo Stadium, which held graduation the prior week and soon will be fully open for use.The two projects total approximately $50 million, of which the state has contributed more than $30 million, according to the Massachusetts School Building Authority and the mayor’s 2015 budget.They have also turned Hill Park and the old Harry Della Russo stadium into state-of-the art facilities.The school is designed to accommodate 690 students in approximately 35 classrooms, each wired with video projectors, Smart Boards and high-speed wireless Internet. The roughly 100,000-square-foot school has a central, light-filled atrium that acts as the hub of the building. The atrium connects the main entrance facing the intersection of Fernwood Avenue and Broadway with an entrance opening to Park Avenue, accommodating both the main entrance for students arriving by vehicle from the main drive and by foot from the nearby neighborhoods. The school office and cafetorium (a cafeteria with a stage at one end and music room behind) anchor the longest sides of the atrium on the first floor, while a gym and library are placed immediately above, respectively.”We want to have one central area with two separate entrances,” Dakin noted. Kelly also chuckled when noting how glass walls enabled workers in the office to look across into the cafeteria.Head down a wing running perpendicular to Fernwood Avenue and there are pre-kindergarten classrooms on the right facing the interior of the site and each with a bathroom. Utility rooms, the kitchen and other rooms face the stadium.On the second floor, classrooms are arranged along the exterior of the building. A corridor loop provides access, and teacher offices (again with lots of windows looking out onto public space) are in the middle of the loop.Classrooms on the west side of the building overlook the renovated stadium, which will open fully once the surface of the end zone finishes setting.”The shot put pit was a particular problem,” Reardon said. “We must have moved it 15-20 times before we got it to a place where it would work.”The stadium includes a full-size track surrounding a multi-sport, artificial-turf field. There are two basketball and two tennis courts, all of which will be lighted. Bleachers can accommodate 2,000 fans. The stadium is separated from the school – while sharing facilities might have been more cost effective, state money comes with very strict guidelines … plus, sharing bathrooms, a field house, or concession stands with an elementary school raises security concerns, Dakin noted.Nevertheless, the school will have access to the stadium facility, and fences can be opened to create a plaza between the two buildings to accommodate crowds on game days.The wing of the school that extends along Park Avenue is three stories tall and has classrooms for older students and areas dedicated for teacher work areas, computer facilities (with higher windows to reduce glare and so servers won’t overheat) and break-out sessions.The entire space is spacious, bright, and technologically equipped. Corridors and stairwells are ample, and the building committee took cues from some of the other successful schools