Published: May 18, 2007 12:47 pm      

Choir director discusses music department space

Goshen, Ind — The Goshen High School music department’s current space is inadequate, but choir director Marcia Yost said staff members could live with less than the 30,000 square feet presented to the feasibility study task force last week.

Yost told members that music staff were asked to dream when they met with representatives from Odle McGuire Shook. The result had an estimated $10.7 million price tag.

“Do we think we need everything on that list? I don’t think so,” Yost said. “I wouldn’t stand before you and say we need all that square footage. We have outgrown what we have, plain and simple.”

Yost said new space is needed because rooms are crowded, practice rooms are non-existent and instruments and equipment are stored unsafely.

“Personally I feel like less than an educator when I have 85 kids in my room, shoulder to shoulder, butt to butt, because that’s how have to put them, they can’t be quiet,” she said.

Yost said her choir room is good for a group of 35 students. Next year she will have a choir of 84. The department has gone from delineating the band room and the orchestra room to calling them the large and small rehearsal rooms because the orchestra has outgrown its 2,150 square feet.

In the last nine years, the orchestra has grown from 34 strings to two full-string orchestras, both with 50 members. When the full string and wind orchestra is together, it numbers between 85 and 90 students, Yost said.

The only soundproofing done during the last renovation was having sand poured down inside the cinder blocks. When the percussion ensemble is warming up, “you can’t do anything,” she said.

The entire music department measures less than 10,000 square feet. The option presented to the task force last week included renovating the current space and adding a 21,000-square-foot addition.

Lafayette Jefferson High School is of comparable size and demographic and has slightly more than Goshen with 12,000 square feet, not counting practice rooms, a dance studio and shower/personal areas. School officials opened bids Thursday for renovations that would bring their music department to 27,000 square feet, said Dennis Cahill, vice president of planning for OMS.

“What they are asking for is not totally out in left field,” Cahill said of the Goshen staff’s request. Cahill said he will meet with the music staff before the task force’s final meeting next Thursday to present a list of space priorities.