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Schools

Buckley School to Step Up Pace of New Construction

Sherman Oaks private school to begin construction of math and science building one year ahead of schedule, staff says.

Thanks to growing support from the school community, the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks will begin a multimillion-dollar project one year early. Construction of the Science and Mathematics Building will start in the summer of 2012 and open for the 2013 school year, school staff announced last week at a K-12 assembly.

This is in addition to the new Academic and Performing Arts Building that is scheduled to open its doors next fall. The school has raised $26 million toward the $35-million capital goal for both buildings.

“We need larger classrooms. We need more classrooms,” said Kim Kerscher, director of communications.

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“Most periods of the day, we are at 100 percent capacity, which means there’s never a free room. If we want to add a course to the curriculum, we can't," Kerscher said. "That’s why we knew it was time to upgrade. When we looked at what our most immediate needs were, one of them was to have more classrooms, so we have options.”

The updated 14,000-square-foot math/science facility will boast two robotics classrooms, a class for chemistry, biology, physics, physical science prep and life, including a seminar room and a math department office.

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“When the campus was originally built, there were very few electives and classes were taught very differently,” Kerscher said. “There wasn’t as much group work or project-based work. Now that our curriculum has so much more diversity and class offerings, there’s a lot of project-based work and technology that wasn’t around back then.”

Construction of the two-story, 19,500-square-foot Academic and Performing Arts Building started earlier this year and will include a theater, rooms for choir, dance, drama, orchestra, additional sixth-grade classrooms, a student technology center and the Parents’ Association K-12 faculty center. 

Classes reportedly will not be displaced or disrupted during construction. When both buildings are open, the school will have added 16 classrooms.

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