One year later, the limitations for BTW students at Hayneville are steep

"TEMPORARY LOCATION"

The words on the marquee in front of the place that Booker T. Washington Magnet High School's students have called home for a year since a fire gutted their previous location are not meant to be received quietly.

The students and faculty have coped with an inadequate setting on Hayneville Road. The repurposed elementary school cannot become permanent, Principal Quesha Starks said. The issues students, staff and family have with the facility are endless:

• The dance studio does not have sprung floors — the kind that absorb shocks specifically made for dancing and other indoor sports — causing injuries on a regular basis.
• There are just two stairwells in the building, with railings that were placed at the height of elementary students, rather than high schoolers. The congestion between periods is not just an annoyance, but a potential threat.
• The bathrooms were designed for younger — and smaller — students, meaning privacy between stalls is compromised.
• The only space the photography magnet could set up a darkroom happened to be the janitor’s closet.
• The science classroom doesn’t have a science lab, meaning high school chemistry students can’t do experiments.

This is not the first time the creative arts high school has functioned in a temporary location. The campus that was damaged by fire also was meant to be temporary, but nearly two decades passed, and a true home never came.

The history of BTW is filled with uncertain moments. Yet, the school has continued to produce students who travel the country sharing their artistic skills. Despite all odds, the student body has continued to thrive. The school has steadily ranked among the state’s top 25 for several years. It’s for this reason that those of the BTW family question whether they are viewed as important in a school district without funds to handle maintenance costs let alone to build new schools.

The move to the much smaller campus was a tough transition, Jazmyne Isaac, BTW’s student government association president, said.

“I am proud of the student body for being able to still perform in unfortunate circumstances,” she said.

More:'Show us you care': Student assails MPS at meeting over plan for BTW

Isaac talked about the difficulty of focusing on math while being able to hear musical theater students through ventilation windows in the classroom.  She even went to the MPS School Board ahead of her second year at the Hayneville Road campus to ask its members to make her school a priority.

"We are achievers. You know that and we are respectfully asking for some answers to important questions about the long-term future of BTW Magnet. Some of these questions have been asked before, but the discussion is muted and no answers or options have been presented for serious consideration," Isaac said. "We feel forgotten and we do not deserve that."

Her goal, like so many others, is to make sure “this temporary location doesn’t become a 21-year temporary location.”

Nana Waldrip started working at BTW in 1987, when it was known as CCPAC and located within G.W. Carver High School. A fire damaged some of their classrooms there, too. When they made the move to the Union Street campus, they were told the school would be moved to a permanent location within a maximum of five years.

More:The fire that lit theirs: BTW art seniors reflect on their year at Hayneville Road

More:BTW seniors discuss the painful loss of their artwork, and their home

She watched as teachers and students adjusted to the inadequate campus — parts of which are rumored to have been condemned. The district had intended to move BTW to the Normandale Shopping Center, but after a hurricane damaged that building, hope for BTW finding a real home dwindled.

“I thought it would have fallen in before it burned,” Waldrip said of the Union Street location.

She served as the technical theater teacher until 2009. Along with the art and photography work of so many students, Building C’s basement held 20 years of sets constructed by Waldrip and her students. Costumes, videos and photos of performances were lost too.

“The history of performances and all the stuff we’ve done is gone,” she said.

Now, technical theater students are forced to go into the community to learn how to construct sets. Waldrip helped put the school's table saw and other equipment in storage before the start of this school year. There’s simply no room at Hayneville to do the work.

“They’re learning, but they’re not getting the hands-on experience. There’s nowhere to put tools, there’s nowhere to build,” Waldrip said.

“It’s an art school and in the arts, you learn by doing. You read, you study, but acting is a physical thing that you do. You, yourself, will not become better until you do it. In tech theater, you can see pictures of sets, you can draw lines and create floor plans but until you can actually build them, you can’t see how they go together,” she said.

Adding to the issue of space, “I just don’t see how anybody can function thinking in an academic way (at Hayneville).”

Her outlook on the school’s future is grim, echoing the sentiment of so many others. MPS has too many irons in the fire. Other schools are in disrepair. There isn’t enough money. BTW has consistently been put on the back burner.

“Downtown, resources-wise, I understand are stretched to the max, but (I do not believe) BTW is not a priority in their mind. And, I don’t think it’s been a priority in their mind for a long time,” Waldrip said.

Schools built in recent history — Brewbaker Tech, Carver, LAMP, Carr, Park Crossing — were only made possible due to the financial support of the city and county. In terms of assisting in the construction of a school for BTW, Mayor Todd Strange said he’d first want to see the district start working on a plan that identifies and prioritizes maintenance needs.

That step is necessary if the district intends to continue moving forward in asking the community to vote to raise property taxes, he said.

To Starks, the tragedy of the fire is riddled with positive changes for her students.

“Our students had to step up to the plate after the fire because we needed them so much. We needed them to speak to the media. We needed them to volunteer. We needed them to be advocates for their school,” Starks said. “The fire developed them as leaders because they did have to mature quickly overnight.”

She’s watching as her students use their voices and their creativity to honor their school. She smiled about one technology student’s plan to create a virtual school to display during Showcase. She shook her head at the rumors that BTW might cease to exist due to the overwhelming challenges MPS faces.

“We are not complaining,” Starks said about the Hayneville placement. “We do know there are deficits financially and also deferred maintenance. We know some schools are 50+ years old. But, you cannot minimize one school’s setback because of all of the other things,” she said.

As displays within the school show: “This school produces so many powerful teacher leaders and students who are internationally acclaimed.”

A Montgomery without BTW would be a quiet city, she said.

“If you removed BTW from Montgomery, you’d be removing something necessary for this city.”

Call Montgomery Advertiser reporter Krista Johnson at 334-303-9019 or email her at kjohnson3@gannett.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @KristaJ1993.