THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME COLE STAFF HAPPY ABOUT NEW FACILITIES FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL PUPILS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Teachers unpacked boxes of books, landscapers planted trees and telephone crews installed phone lines Monday in hurried preparations for moving Cole Middle School into a new campus.

Opening Wednesday, though construction will continue on the gymnasium and on relocatable classrooms, the new campus will get the district's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders out of school buildings designed for younger pupils.

``It's going to be really exciting this year,'' said teacher David Evenson, surrounded by computers, a wind tunnel, a material-strength testing device and other high-tech gear in the industrial technology room. ``I walk out of here having to poke myself.''

Expected to cost more than $12 million by the time a second phase with a band room and more classrooms is added - possibly starting next year - the new campus on Avenue I near 30th Street East includes a gymnasium, cafeteria, library, facilities, science labs and the industrial technology library.

The campus was financed with part of a $15.5 million bond issue approved by Eastside voters in 1997. The state paid half, and the district paid half.

Separated by a grassy field from Avenue I, the school's one-story buildings are faced with stone and bricks in patterns of brown and beige, accented by blue ceramic materials. Roofs and awnings are curved white metal.

More than 800 students will start school Wednesday. With the second phase completed, Cole will accommodate 1,000 students.

``We would have been out of room this year had we not finished,'' Eastside Superintendent Connie Webb said.

The new campus provides more modern facilities for middle school pupils who since the late 1980s have been using school buildings constructed in the 1950s at Eastside Elementary School, school officials said.

Because of its history as an elementary school, the original campus had no gymnasium and students used a former auto shop for a library and converted classrooms for science laboratories and an art room.

Science teacher Barbara Leonard is happy with her new science laboratory. Its sturdy tables are bolted to the floor so the students can't move them, and they have their own electrical outlets, eliminating the extension cords of her former lab. A separate room provides more storage space than she had, and a stainless demonstration table replaces a wheeled cart topped with a plywood shelf.

``This is the first time I've had a real science lab,'' said Leonard, who has taught science at Cole since it opened. ``I had a classroom with tables.''

The former Cole campus will be refurbished over the next two years, then reopened as Eastside Elementary School for kindergarten through fifth-grade pupils, Webb said.

Relocatable classrooms from the former Cole campus and the present Eastside campus then will be shifted to a school site at 40th Street East and Avenue J-8. Planned to hold pupils who now attend Tierra Bonita North Elementary School, that campus is expected to open in fall 2002.

Cole's gymnasium is expected to be ready in October, Webb said.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Social studies and language arts teacher Diann Brussow unpacks boxes in her new classroom at Cole Middle School.

(2 -- 3 -- color) With classes starting Wednesday, the finishing touches are being made to prepare Cole Middle School for students. Science teacher Barbara Leonard brings a litter of month-old kittens into her new lab.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer