With a $3.3M project complete, tour Bald Eagle Area’s new weight room, forestry building
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- We toured new facilities at the Bald Eagle Area School District.
- A roughly $3.3 million project funded a new weight room, forestry building and office.
- District officials and teachers say the new facilities are a huge improvement.
New and renovated facilities are helping the Bald Eagle Area School District provide better experiences for students, faculty and staff.
Through a comprehensive $3.3 million project, the district constructed a new, larger forestry building and a modern fitness center complete with state-of-the-art equipment and more room for fitness activities. The project, completed last fall, also constructed a dedicated student services office.
The project brings new life to several district facilities. The new weight room was once Bald Eagle Area’s forestry building, while the student services office occupies the former weight room.
The Centre Daily Times toured the new Bald Eagle Area facilities in late February to learn how they’re impacting the day-to-day lives of students and staff after opening last fall.
Inside Bald Eagle Area’s forestry program
The district’s new forestry building provides immense resources for Bald Eagle Area students enrolled in classes that focus on agriculture mechanics, forestry and wildlife management.
Teacher Jade Thompson instructs five periods of students each day in the building, which offers far more room for equipment, lumber and hands-on demonstrations. His students’ work helps to manage the district’s 500 acres of land and cut down trees in accordance with a 25-year forest maintenance plan.
“I’ve talked to a lot of other agricultural teachers across Pennsylvania, and I don’t mean to brag, but they envy what we have here,” Thompson said. “A lot of schools don’t have the land we have, and it helps having the resources. Some districts don’t even have the trees to cut down, let alone mill and dry.”
In the building, students can complete wood shop projects, work on electrical wiring or even learn how to weld. The facility also houses lumber cut, milled and dried by students before it’s used in Bald Eagle Area wood shop classes.
“The kids aren’t professionals. We get them raw, and by the time I’ve had them for a few years, they’re cutting very nice lumber,” Thompson said. “That requires trial and error, and we’ve got plenty of space for that now.”
Hands-on work at the forestry building can help Bald Eagle Area students pursue certifications for the use of chainsaws and tractors, as well as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
Though the district’s hands-on forestry and agricultural programs are not new, the new facility offers far more space for students and equipment. The programs formerly shared a space with storage for the district’s maintenance staff.
Access to forestry and agricultural programming through Bald Eagle Area classes provides even more instructional time for students, Thompson said. The district can offer this instruction on its own property, saving students from making the trip out to the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology.
“I end up having more time with them than if they went to CPI,” the teacher said. “There really aren’t any transition times. I have more minutes with them than if they’d go to a vocational program.”
The district’s new forestry building has helped boost student morale and drum up even more excitement for these programs, students Jacob Richardson and Carnell Noone said.
Amenities offered at the new building have helped the district’s program double down on sustainable practices, Thompson said. The facility is equipped with reverse osmosis devices, as well as other tools that can convert waste oil from district cafeterias into biodiesel fuel to power a tractor. Even glycerin byproducts are combined with sawdust to create wood chips.
“I like that idea and emphasizing that the kids are making a product that they know another kid used, that something that might’ve been waste before is becoming something positive,” Thompson said. “Before, all that oil went into the dumpster. Now, we’re using it to run our tractor throughout each school week.”
New-look weight room gets a lift
Many years later, health and physical education teacher Donald Peters can still recall the state of Bald Eagle Area’s weight rooms from his time as a student.
“When I went to school here, we had a little broom closet that doubled as our lifting room with one little machine at the center of it,” Peters said. “We’ve evolved over the years.”
The district’s new weight room is now equipped with a dozen adjustable racks fit with free weights, adjustable dumbbells, cable stations and belt squat stations, providing opportunities for groups of students to run through full workouts without needing to move across the gym.
The larger space, installed inside the former forestry building, allows the district to bring in a wider range of equipment, including vinyl tires and tools for agility training. The weight room is an ideal fit for Bald Eagle Area sports teams and the district’s Unified Strength and Conditioning team, and it will soon receive another boost with the installation of cardio machines and software to help track students’ workouts and their progress.
“This offers everything,” Peters said. “There’s something for everyone, with the turf, the agility training, the racks. Kids can invent their own workouts and approaches. It’s great seeing them use these tools and think about their health and their workouts.”
The longtime teacher said the new weight room has significantly improved student participation and excitement. His team works to help design workout program for students who don’t already have plans crafted by district sports teams, allowing them to explore different options and find activities that best suit their interests and needs.
“If you come in here, every rack is busy after school,” Peters said. “It’s filled with students. And the kids who aren’t necessarily athletes or interested in sports, we’re getting more and more of them involved.”
Expanding the weight room became a key priority for Bald Eagle Area officials, who noticed the former facility was feeling increasingly small. The old building’s “hodgepodge of equipment,” according to Superintendent Christopher Santini, was old, potentially unsafe and failing to meet the district’s needs.
Now, the district is excited to move forward with an all-encompassing facility that’s receiving rave reviews.
“It’s unbelievable,” Peters said “I don’t think any other high school in Pennsylvania has a facility like this. We’re very fortunate.”
Student services on-site
Once the weight room moved out of its former spot, Bald Eagle Area School District officials began converting the site into its new student services office.
Thanks to its central location on the junior-senior high school campus, the office can more easily provide testing services for students and hold meetings with parents. In years past, the office operated out of a trailer behind the district’s administration office across South Eagle Valley Road.
“We were impressed by the transformation,” special education director Melissa Butterworth said. “When we walked into the [former] weight room, I thought it smelled so awful. ‘This is really going to be our new building?’ But they ripped it out and made it a beautiful space for us that provides a lot more space for everything we need.”
Student services workers, including the district’s two student psychologists, use the office to evaluate students academically and emotionally. Students were never tested at the former trailer office, which instead required staffers to make daily visits to schools.
“This is beautiful compared to where we were,” Butterworth said. “It’s really worked out. It’s freed up our office space and provided spaces for meetings with parents.”
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