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FARMINGTON: If the shoe building fits ...

Foster Tech students move in to former Franklin Shoe Co. building, go to work

By Leslie Bridgers lbridgers@pressherald.com
Staff Writer

FARMINGTON -- A former shoe factory, converted into a classroom building, wasn't quite ready for the start of school this week.

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NEW HOME: Foster Technology Center classes CNA/Health Sciences, left, and Computer Technology, right, work separated by a wall in the former Franklin Shoe Co. building in Farmington Friday morning. Foster Tech will call the old factory home for the next three years while the main facility undergoes renovations.

Staff photo by Michael G. Seamans

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WORK: Employability Skills teacher Denise Correll works with student Tiffany Agga on Friday morning. Students at Foster Tech come from Mt. Blue, Jay, Livermore Falls, Rangeley and Mt. Abram high schools.

Staff photo by Michael G. Seamans

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But students at Foster Technology Center aren't sitting in study halls, waiting for it to be finished. They're putting the final touches on themselves.

The old home of the Franklin Shoe Co. will serve as Foster Tech's school building for the next three years, while the $64 million Mt. Blue Learning Campus is under construction.

"A lot of me gets excited about what we're going to have," the tech center's director Glenn Kapiloff said about the new school slated to open in 2013.

"But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that we have students here now," he said.

Since last spring, the district's maintenance team, contractors and students have been working to turn the 15,000-square-foot warehouse space into a school.

High schoolers enrolled in the drafting program designed the layout. Computer technology classes worked on the wiring for Internet access and phone lines. Welding students made metal grates to cover trenches around the building.

"It was a great lesson plan," said computer technology instructor Rich Wilde. "They get to design, install and maintain it, which is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

Kyle Tripp, one of the students who helped wire the classrooms last spring, said it was satisfying to see the system being used by students and teachers this week.

"Everybody has Internet and I guess the phones work," he said. "We did make mistakes, but it came together."

Some school time this month will be dedicated to finishing up that work. A portable classroom that houses the forestry program still needs to be hooked up to the Internet and to phone lines, Wilde said.

But, from his air-conditioned classroom, forestry instructor Dean Merrill wasn't complaining Friday about the few things left unfinished, even though there was no working bathroom nearby.

"Go with what you got," Merrill said. "I'd rather have it this way than having juniors and seniors that can't take forestry."

Students at Foster Tech come from Mt. Blue, Jay, Livermore Falls, Rangeley and Mt. Abram high schools.

Some of the tech center's programs, including early childhood education, composites, business education and biotechnology, will continue to be offered out of its building on the Mt. Blue campus and will shift to different classrooms, depending on where the construction work is being done.

The ten programs that were moved into the former shoe factory, next to the Farmington Fairgrounds, use large pieces of equipment -- like car lifts for the automotive program and ventilation hoods for the culinary arts kitchen -- that would have been too difficult to relocate mid-year, Kapiloff said.

Students said they weren't disappointed about having to take classes in the converted factory.

"We're going to paint the walls, so it's pretty," said Lindsay Couture, a senior from Jay High School in the commercial arts and photography program.

For some students, Kapiloff said, the chance to work with their hands this week was the best part of being at school. He could tell watching the welding students, after they put up cabinets in their workspace.

"They were sweaty, their hands were greasy, and they were smiling," he said.

Leslie Bridgers -- 861-9252

lbridgers@centralmaine.com