Thursday, September 23, 1999
Church serving well as school
Space crunch sent youngest to rented space
BY SUE KIESEWETTER
Enquirer Contributor
MAINEVILLE — An infant's changing table is not what most teachers in the Little Miami Schools use for a desk. But it suits Jennifer Ervin just fine.
She is one of three kindergarten teachers from Maineville Elementary School who have been moved to Maineville United Methodist Church for one year to ease crowding.
Each day, Ms. Ervin, Susan Cormany, Rayna Cressell and the district's Academically Talented Program teacher, Patricia Cusick, go to the small church at Fosters-Maineville Road and Ohio 48, about a half-mile from Maineville Elementary.
There, they have set up their own school in the pioneer church, built in 1844 with its wooden floors, bell tower and stained glass windows. Children's artwork is intermingled with church announcements on the walls outside the rooms.
To ready the church, the district spent about $20,000 over the summer for painting, installing Internet access, and new lighting, said Superintendent Michael Virelli. Each room has a ceiling fan. The Morrow Child Development Center donated playground equipment.
"We've set up our own school, our own routine and our own system,” said Ms. Cressell, whose classroom has a large stained glass window. “To (children) this is school. It's not a church.”
Mondays through Fridays, the rooms — no more than half the size of Maineville's kindergarten rooms — are used almost exclusively by the schoolchildren.
Church staff use a house next door the church owns.
Each Friday, a school custodian moves the tiny desks and chairs to a corner and the supply cabinets are locked so the rooms can be used for services and religious education over the weekend.
Sunday evenings, the process is reversed.
“The church very graciously took down the religious pictures from the walls and allows us to leave up our kindergarten things,” Mrs. Cormany said. "We're very careful not to spill anything on their carpeting or do any harm.”
For that reason, the teachers hesitate to do much painting. They may set up easels outdoors in spring. For now, children use chalk on the circular driveway in front of the church where shuttle buses from Maineville Elementary drop off and pick up.
Principal Melody Goodwin said the arrangement, though not perfect, is working out well.
Next year, when the new high school opens, the district's fifth-and sixth-graders will leave the elementary schools and go to what is now the junior high school. Seventh- and eighth-graders will move to the current high school.
The shift will leave enough room in the elementary school for kindergarten to return.
For now, the three teachers plan their lessons together and unlike their colleagues at Maineville Elementary, incorporate physical education, art and music into their lessons. With less classroom space, they have brought fewer materials and use outside facilities better.
"I don't mind it at all,” said parent Evelyn McDonnell, whose daughter, Anna, is in Ms. Cressell's class. “I like the smaller size.”
Her daughter likes school for other reasons. “I like it because we get to go out and play at recess and we have a Hula Hoop and chalk,” she said.
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