The new Brecksville-Broadview Heights Elementary School will contain an indoor sliding board and house a therapy dog. (Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com)
BRECKSVILLE, Ohio -- The new Brecksville-Broadview Heights Elementary School will contain an enclosed indoor sliding board and dog-washing station and will house a therapy dog.
Those three elements recently raised the eyebrows of some school board members and seemed to catch them by surprise -- even though the slide, dog and washing station have been part of the building design from the beginning.
“The slide is $26,000,” board member Kathleen Mack said during the March 23 board meeting. “I understand in the grand scheme of things that’s very little.
“(But) I remember how difficult it was to get that (2018) levy passed (to pay for the new school),” Mack said. “And I have to say, the optics alone -- I personally and I’ll speak for myself -- I’m not comfortable with it (the slide). It’s very ostentatious.”
Superintendent Joelle Magyar said the sliding board, therapy dog and dog-washing station are just a few of the features in the new school meant to foster learning and make children more comfortable. Such features also include a “maker space” where children can participate in robotics projects, a mobile TV production lab and 3D printers.
“There are many elements ... that we put into the building to make it really feel like an elementary school and to feel like it is a great learning environment where kids are wanting to come and learn,” Magyar told the board.
Magyar said that even with unorthodox features like the sliding board and dog-washing station, the school’s construction is on time and nearly $2 million under budget.
“We have been good stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars,” Magyar said.
Board President Mark Dosen asked Magyar to keep the board notified in the future, perhaps through a weekly update, whenever the administration introduces new and unexpected concepts to the school system.
Dosen said the administration doesn’t necessarily need board approval for every move it makes, but added that board members would like to stay informed in case parents ask about what’s happening in the district.
The new elementary school and a separate but connected athletic field house containing four basketball courts and a running track, both scheduled to open this fall, will cost no more than $47.4 million to build, under a 2019 agreement between the school board and Shook Construction Co., a Dayton firm that is acting as the project’s construction manager.
Both buildings will be located on the 185-acre Blossom Hill property, owned by the City of Brecksville, on Oakes Road. The school district and city will share the field house and part of the school.
The new elementary school will replace Central, Chippewa, Highland and Hilton elementary schools, which are being shuttered due to declining enrollment.
In May 2018, district voters approved a 2.2-mill bond issue that will pay for the new school.
At the March 23 meeting, new board member Tish Kwiatkowski -- who was first elected in November and wasn’t on the board when the district designed the new school -- asked Magyar what led to the decision to include a spiral-shaped sliding board in the new elementary school.
Kwiatkowski expressed concern about the slide’s safety. She asked when pupils would use the sliding board.
“Community members have already reached out,” Kwiatkowski said. “We’ve had students who have gone through the building, and staff members who have gone through the building, and they have actually reached out to board members with questions about the building.”
Dosen said he was part of a committee that for 18 months attended monthly meetings on the new school’s progress and received updates three times a month. However, he said the updates were so voluminous and detailed it was difficult to keep track of everything.
Dosen asked if any research had been done to demonstrate how an indoor sliding board might help pupils, or if any other schools had indoor slides.
Magyar said the slide -- leading from the second floor to the first-floor media center or library -- is part of a state-of-the-art, innovative school that pupils will look forward to attending. Some elements of the school will allow the children to have fun and/or receive rewards.
“The building was designed to support social and emotional learning in our students, not just the academic needs of our students,” Magyar said.
Pupils won’t be permitted to slide down the board whenever they want, Magyar said. The school might reward pupils who are struggling with behavioral issues by allowing them a trip down the slide for good behavior. It’s part of the district’s adaptation of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, a system that seeks to prevent unwanted behaviors by teaching positive behaviors.
Also, pupils transitioning from a second-floor activity or class to the first-floor media center might also use the slide, Magyar said.
As for safety, Magyar said the slide is completely enclosed with a locked safety gate at the top. Teachers and staff will decide when to allow children on the slide, and pupils will learn the slide rules.
For pupils with disabilities, whom Magyar said represent about 12 percent of the district population, the new school will include other fun activities -- including a “selfie wall” where they will be able to post selfies, and other interactive spaces -- if they are physically unable to use the slide.
When asked if she was aware of any other schools with indoor sliding boards, Magyar said the wife of a Shook official was somehow connected to a school with an indoor slide. However, Magyar wasn’t able to name the school.
Neither Dosen nor Mack knew of another school with an indoor sliding board.
Mack didn’t appreciate that a central element in the new school, the sliding board, would be inaccessible to children who have special needs.
“The fact that I know these children are not going to be able to use this slide -- not all, but some of them -- saddens me,” Mack said. “It’s just one more obstacle that they have in their lives.”
Mack said she trusted Magyar to make good educational decisions, but couldn’t imagine why the administration would choose to install a slide in the school. She said she would have scrapped the slide if she had been made aware of it, and apologized to families for not knowing.
“Yes, this ship has sailed, and I can’t say I didn’t know about it,” Mack said. “I did not know it was in the middle of the media center.”
Dosen, however, said that although the board had questions regarding some design features in the school, “the financials are fantastic.”
“This project has been run incredibly well, very efficient, on time, on budget,” Dosen said.
Kwiatkowski said board members received emails asking why the district has obtained a therapy dog.
Magyar said the therapy dog, a female chocolate Labrador retriever named Cocoa, was purchased in February from a Philadelphia-area breeder. The dog will support the social and emotional needs of children.
One year’s worth of training, veterinary, food and other bills related to the dog will be paid for by a $17,000 Ohio School Safety and Security Grant.
The dog, for now kept in the office of the Chippewa Elementary School guidance counselor, is taken to children experiencing emotional difficulties during the school day. The dog will be housed at the new elementary school once it opens.
Magyar said the dog was recently taken to visit with a preschool child who has autism. When the child saw the animal, she yelled, “Dog.”
“It was a very emotional moment for our teachers, because the child hadn’t spoken,” Magyar said.
The dog also was escorted one day to a Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School pupil who was upset and refused to go to class.
“The girl’s face lit up,” Magyar said. “She sat there and petted the puppy for about 10 minutes and pulled herself together and said she was ready to go to class.”
Magyar said families can opt out of dog visits if their child is allergic or afraid of dogs. The dog won’t wander the building.
“(The dog is) a tool in the toolbox that helps students who are struggling socially or emotionally,” Magyar said.
Magyar said the district is exploring how it might use the dog instructionally.
“We’re deeply committed to innovative learning, and apart from the calming presence of Cocoa, if there are opportunities for additional meaningful learning, we’ll identify those methods and incorporate them,” Magyar told cleveland.com in an email.
Magyar said Excel K-9 Services Inc. in Hiram is training both the dog and her handlers in the district. So far, the handlers are a middle school guidance counselor and an elementary school teacher, but Magyar and another staffer are also undergoing training.
However, Mack said board members didn’t know the district was obtaining a dog. She said she found out when someone told her while she was in a grocery store line.
“You went and made a decision on your own in a vacuum,” Mack, who said she’s not anti-dog, told Magyar. “That’s upsetting to me, and as I think we’ve seen in emails, it’s upsetting to the public.”
Dosen said some board members know of school districts that use therapy dogs through contractors or volunteer partners. They also discovered two districts, one in Newton Falls and the other the Lakota Local Schools, that own and care for their own therapy dogs.
A study originally appearing on the Frontiers of Veterinary Science website and reprinted on the National Institute of Health website found that the jury is still out on therapy dogs in schools.
“Therapy dogs in educational settings have gained increase traction in recent years,” the study says. “Despite its potential benefits and popularity, there remain concerns of perceived risks such as sanitation, allergies and safety issues, as well as a lack of guidelines, regulations and support resources available to school staff. Research is further lacking into the implementation process of therapy dog programs in educational settings.”
As for the dog-washing station, it’s another way to teach life skills, something the district is required to do, and can lead to a career, Magyar said. The dog-washing station is designed so that disabled children can use it.
The washing station would be used for the therapy dog, although the district may also allow staffers to bring their dogs in for washes, Magyar said.
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