New wing at LMS completed

Sixth-grade students attending Lincoln Middle School next year will be learning in a cutting-edge environment.

The Sweetwater County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees hosted an open house for the recently-completed sixth-grade wing of Lincoln Middle School Tuesday evening. The space was previously occupied by the district’s central administration offices, which have since moved to the former Wilson Elementary School building across the street.

Superintendent Donna Little-Kaumo said the wing was the biggest capital project funded by the Wyoming School Facilities Commission this year. Little-Kaumo said the renovation work cost $4 million and took under a year to complete.

The wing follows similar projects the district has engaged during the past few years, utilizing an existing space and remodeling it to fit its needs. Other examples are the district’s central offices being located to the former Wilson building and moving Expedition Academy into its own building, which was originally a church.

“We’ve really dressed up some bones,” Little-Kaumo said about using LMS’s original architecture in a new manner.

Classrooms in the new wing feature the cutting edge of educational research. Little-Kaumo said classrooms have lights capable of switching hues to reflect different activities. Rooms feature buttons for lighting specific to reading, test taking, activities and general classroom instruction.

The rooms also feature focus walls, walls painted a different color from the rest of the room, Little-Kaumo said help direct students’ attention during lessons. Central to the wing is a 2,100 square-foot activities room.

Security was also a concern in the design of the building as well. The wing’s main entrance features a security vestibule for visitors.

Visitors to the school must buzz in at the main door before being allowed inside. Once inside, they speak with a school employee in the vestibule before being admitted into the building.

Little-Kaumo said middle school building was opened in 1976 as Green River High School, with the newly-renovated wing being added onto the building in the 1980s. The wing housed the high school’s math, science and foreign language classrooms. As GRHS continued growing, the school board passed a bond to build the current GRHS and once the high school moved out, Lincoln became a middle school and the wing was used by sixth-grade classes.

Five years later, the sixth-grade students were moved to Monroe Intermediate School and the wing was converted to house the district’s central offices.

“This wing has never been empty,” Little-Kaumo said.