There’s a lot of new space inside Maine South High School these days.
Administrative offices used by Maine Township High School District 207 moved out of the Park Ridge school on March 31, making room in Maine South’s C-Wing for school offices and new instructional opportunities for students, according to Principal Shawn Messmer.
Among projects approved by the District 207 Board of Education is a plan to relocate Maine South’s main office to the former administrative front office location and create “guidance suites” where current school offices exist adjacent to the V-Wing. These suites will include offices for the deans, counselors, social workers, school psychologists and other student support personnel in a centralized location, Messmer said.
That leaves about 4,800 square-feet of space within the rear of the former District 207 administrative space that will be developed for student use, though no concrete plans have been hammered out as of yet, Messmer said.
“In our 10-year plan that was approved in 2012, one of the identified needs for Maine South was room for large group instructional space,” he said. “This new configuration is going to give us 4,800 additional square feet of instructional space in the future.”
Work on this reconfiguration could take place during the summer of 2016, Messmer said.
While Maine South’s main office will be relocated by the end of the school year, work on the guidance suites will begin in June.
The reason behind the creation of the suites is to “better deliver guidance services to our students,” according to the principal
Currently, guidance counselors have offices scattered around the school building. Under the suite arrangement, all student support personnel will be located in one centralized place and there will be counselors available to all students at any point in the day, Messmer said.
“It’s a more customer-friendly approach for both students and parents in that the student will now go to their assigned suite for just about every need they have at school, from selecting their courses to getting their caps and gowns,” he explained. “And if they have discipline issues or need counseling services, these will all be handled out of the specific guidance suite they are assigned to. It will help our bigger school feel smaller to students.”
The project is budgeted at $195,360.
District 207 administrative offices and the board of education meeting room were housed inside former lecture hall space at Maine South since the early 1980s. On March 31, during spring break week, they moved to the former Tool and Manufacturing Association building at 1177 S. Dee Road — adjacent to the Maine South Campus. The building was purchased by the district last year and also houses Ralph J. Frost Academy, an alternative high school operated by District 207. Frost Academy opened in January after it was relocated from Morton Grove.
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