Lowell Elementary School History Project

However, 15 people who were at the site underwent decontamination procedures, Davis said. Fire personnel were concerned about possible contamination because the explosion disrupted asbestos wrapping around the boiler pipes.

Those 15 were staff or firefighters who had re-entered the building and given the option of decontamination, said Tacoma School District spokeswoman Leanna Albrecht. They removed their outer clothing, slipped on decontamination suits and took showers away from the school, Davis said. No students needed decontamination.

The explosion knocked over a concrete wall, blew off the front and back portions of the boiler and damaged the chimney vents, Davis said.

Fired by natural gas, the boiler sits in the basement of the school’s main building.

Tacoma fire inspectors and the state boiler inspector are investigating the cause of the explosion, Davis said. In addition, other experts are determining the soundness of the building and monitoring the air quality. A district news release reported “minimal” damage to the asbestos-wrapped pipes around the boiler and said air samples were marginal.

Classes were canceled following the explosion and the school will remain closed today and Friday for assessment and repairs. The incident happened before the school day started so few of the school’s 410 students were in the building, Albrecht said. Those who were in the building were immediately evacuated.

The school notified parents to pick up children, who waited in a primary wing detached from the main building.

The sound could be heard a mile or more around the school.

Cheryl Carr was waiting in her car at the traffic light on North I Street, next to Lowell, when she and her 4-year-old-daughter, Ellie, were startled by the thunderous boom. She turned toward the school and saw what looked like a hubcap fly perhaps 30 feet above the building. Since she also saw a half-dozen youngsters under a school overhang, she wondered if it was all part of a science project.

“They didn’t scatter,” she said of the children. “Right after that the (traffic) light turned green. I thought that’s a really weird kind of thing that they’ve got going on.”

When she later learned what happened, she said, “I’m glad no one got hurt.”

John Henrikson contributed to this report.

A parent stood outside Whittier Elementary School in Fircrest on Thursday, urging parents to tell district officials their children need more than one daily recess.

Several fifth-graders at Lowell Elementary School started a petition drive to urge school officials to let them have one more recess.

Television and radio news reporters descended upon Tacoma schools to report the situation.

So what triggered this reaction over – of all things – recess?

The News Tribune reported Thursday that a Tacoma School District administrator issued a memo to principals last week reminding them of the district’s 1997 position on recess.

According to the district rule, elementary schools can schedule recess time at lunch, but additional daily recesses for first-through fifth-graders are forbidden. Kindergartners, however, are allowed an additional 15 minutes of teacher-supervised “gross motor activities” a day, which can be outdoors. Teachers in other grades can give their kids an outdoor break in addition to the lunch playtime – but only if the instructors feel their youngsters need one on a particular day.

Karyn Clarke, assistant superintendent for elementary education, said schools need to devote as much time as possible to instruction in order to meet requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Most of the district’s 36 elementary schools were already observing the recess rule. But the memo prompted at least three schools – Whittier, Sherman, and Lowell – to end their morning or afternoon recesses.

Whittier officially ended its long-standing practice of one additional recess for students on Thursday, though some teachers who felt their students needed it let their youngsters have an outdoor break.

Parent Bill Stauffacher stood on the sidewalk outside the school, passing out fliers that read: “Call your elected school board members today and tell them our children want time for RECESS!”

“Kids deserve a break,” Stauffacher said. “Having a structured, scheduled recess keeps kids motivated over the entire day.”

His daughter, Madeline, 9, said, “I don’t want to get rid of recess. We just got a new playground.”

Fellow Whittier third-grader Elizabeth Withrow and a friend mounted an informal petition drive, collecting more than 100 signatures from students who want to save their recess. Some parents and students planned to wave signs at the Fircrest school this morning to voice their support for the additional daily recess.

Meanwhile, at Lowell Elementary School in Tacoma’s North End, fifth-graders Colin Terry, Sadie Treleven and Megan Barkley started a petition drive to get back their morning recess, which ended last Friday.

Colin said they had collected 120 signatures from fellow students at lunch recess. They plan to present the petition to their principal.

The youngsters and classmates discussed the pros and cons of keeping the additional recess during their class for gifted students on Thursday, teacher Pat Krick said.

Some students wondered whether they should appoint a representative to tell teachers when they needed a recess. Some said teachers need a break to prepare for the next lesson.

“Everyone said we think test scores will stay the same with or without recess because it’s just 15 minutes long,” Megan said.

And how is life with just the lunch recess? “It’s been harder because people have a bunch of energy and want to run it off,” Sadie said. “They miss hanging out with friends and having some free time and getting exercise and stuff.”

Clarke noted that Tacoma has a shorter school day than many neighboring districts and must make the most of its time.

The number and time of recesses vary in neighboring districts; some have two in addition to lunch. Morning or afternoon recesses typically last 15 minutes.

Officials or Web sites in neighboring districts indicated the following elementary school days:

• Bethel: Typically, six hours and five minutes
• Clover Park, Federal Way and Peninsula: Six and a half hours
• University Place: At least six hours and 10 minutes
• Puyallup: Six hours and 20 minutes four days a week, and three hours and 35 minutes on Wednesdays.

News Tribune staff writer Martha Modeen contributed to this report.

Building by building, word by word, the French village comes to life through the crayons of students in Rachel Hobdon’s French class.

The youngsters draw le cinema, la boulangerie, l’église catholique and the rest of their village Français.

I’m making a musée, which is museum in French,” says third-grader Henry DeMarais. “It’s fun learning about France because I never really knew much about France.”

The third-, fourth- and fifth-graders are among some 100 students who study a foreign language before the regular school day begins at Lowell Elementary School in Tacoma’s North End.

Four years ago, Lowell parents eager for their children to learn another language organized the program.

The program offers introductory and advanced instruction in Spanish and French, and this fall added beginning Japanese. Classes meet twice a week for 40 minutes before school starts.

Parents who want their child to participate pay $200 a year for tuition. A parent committee hires the teachers, who are native speakers or studied the language in college. Lowell Principal Bob Dahl and regular Lowell teachers support the program by allowing classes to be taught in school classrooms.

Instead of a hard-core academic program with homework and tests, the program focuses on conversation and culture.

“We get to do projects,” said fourth-grader Wyatt Bauder. “It’s more than just learning the language.”

Hobden, Bauder’s teacher, recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in French literary studies, and has a separate job developing French language courses.

“It’s a great program,” Hobden said of the Lowell classes. “It’s important kids are exposed to it when they’re this young.”

Few public elementary schools offer foreign language as part of the regular school-day curriculum.

The only Tacoma elementary school to do so is Sheridan on the East Side, where students in the “language immersion” program speak French, Japanese or Spanish for most of the day. Grant offers a Spanish-language art class as part of its extracurricular activities, and last year, Sherman offered an after-school Spanish class for a fee.

Some families who live in other school neighborhoods have enrolled at Lowell so their children could participate in the before-school language program. That’s the main reason Diane Bauder selected Lowell for her son, Wyatt, who’s studying French for his fourth year in the program, and her first-grader, Alegra, who started French this year.

Bauder, who studied French in high school, said, “When I through things out at him, he knows what I’m saying. Now he can say something back to me.”

Fifth-grader Megan Thompson said she’s taking French so she and her mother can visit Paris someday.

“She thinks it’s a cool town, and she’s been learning French, too,” Megan said. “She buys tapes. I tell her what I learned, and we practice it over and over.”

Katie Baird said she sees the program as adding an international dimension to the curriculum for her second-grader, James Corbett, and fourth-grader, Ben Corbett, who both study Spanish.

“I hope that it instills an interest in foreign language,” she said, “so that when they’re older and have more opportunities to be exposed to more formal education they’ll be more enthusiastic about doing that.”

When a fifth-grader stands on a stage in front of his peers and wears a blue wig, giggling is bound to ensue. But some 400 students at Tacoma’s Lowell Elementary School got something more than a few laughs.

They learned something about electricity.

They watched as the hair of their classmate’s wig stood on end as he placed his hand on a Van de Graaff generator – a device that generates static electricity. The wig allowed students to see the effect of electricity flowing through the student’s body.

It was one of several fun experiments used by teachers from the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. They brought their “Physics on Wheels” van to Lowell to kick off the school’s science fair.

As part of the fair, the students work at home and in class on various projects. They’ll unveil the results in early June, said Principal Robert Dahl.

To get students excited about the subject, a Pacific Science Center team spent last Friday at Lowell. They offered hands-on exhibits and classroom demonstrations.

They started the day with a school assembly that was part science, part comedy act.

Using liquid nitrogen, a balloon and a blown-up latex glove as props, teachers Nikki Lynn and Katie Jindra demonstrated some basic science principles, such as how molecules speed up when heated and slow down when cooled.

The experiments got an appreciative murmur from the students in the auditorium.

So did the Van de Graaff generator. Jindra waved a metal wand around the generator, prompting a series of clicks as electrons jumped to the wand. When she waved a bigger wand, blue sparks jumped between them.

But it was the laughs that kept things interesting for the youngsters – not least the spectacle of lids popping off jars of liquid nitrogen like corks from champagne bottles.

The Pacific Science Center’s Science on Wheels Program travels to schools around the state, demonstrating a variety of scientific principles. The presenters have mastered one of the chief principles of show business: Always leave ‘em laughing.

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The Parent-Supported Garden

There’ll be a whole lot of pesto-eating going on this fall at Lowell Elementary.

The North-end school’s garden is full of basil, not to mention planter boxes filled with tomatoes, carrots and potatoes, and even peppers grown in old car tires for warmth. Ten years old, it’s a garden that is sustained by a committed PTA, with paid parent-teachers and a $700-a-year plant budget.

It started as a fifth-grade community project on how to beautify the school,” says Sass Ruthven, whose daughter was in the project.

After 50 parents spent a day building boxes and shoveling compost, the garden began as an after-school activity with only a few classes involved.

Then more parents were recruited, and four years ago the PTA began paying two parents $10/hour each to teach gardening to every class.

Ruthven is the outdoor parent, taking a few kids at a time to work in the garden, while the indoor parent teaches science and prepares the harvest as a healthy class snack.

Spring is spent planting – potatoes, beans, onions, peas, greens, carrots, cucumber and tomatoes – and fall is spent making lots and lots of pesto before mulching the beds and planting cover crops for winter.

Two bake sales per year raise money for plants, which the school gets at a discount from Portland Avenue Nursery.

The school also just began recycling cafeteria scraps in the compost heap and worm bin, and a winding herb garden was added last year.

“I am extremely proud of our garden program,” says Ruthven, of the transformation from dull concrete to beautiful outdoor learning space. “I think it’s one of a kind.”