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Issue date: August 18, 2000

The making of a new middle school

by Jeb Bing

Pleasanton's architecturally striking Thomas S. Hart Middle School will open late this month, the first school built in the Hacienda Business Park community and the first named for a teacher, principal and administrator. The late Thomas Hart joined the Pleasanton school district in 1950 and served in various key positions for 25 years. He was assistant superintendent when he died of cancer in 1975 at the age of 49.

The $17 million Hart Middle School includes more than 96,000 square feet of buildings on a prime 19.6-acre Hacienda site at Willow Road and West Las Positas Boulevard. From these streets, motorists can see the school's new rounded buildings and towers, an atrium, varying roof shapes and stone, brickwork and steel that are in eye-catching shapes and colors.

The library and music sections have curving walls facing onto a courtyard, with translucent glass block inserts to carry light inside. The two-story building that houses the music department is shaped like a baby grand piano when viewed from above. It has a circular wall with small windows positioned like the musical notes that open "America the Beautiful."

"Our new music instructor Dennis Aquilina, who is transferring over from Amador, actually played the music by 'reading the windows,'" said Steve Maher, Hart Middle School principal.

Maher, a 29-year veteran of the district, was hired by Thomas Hart in 1971. Most recently the principal at Pleasanton Middle School, Maher was chosen in May 1999 to launch the new Hart school, and has worked ever since with architects, contractors and state and local curriculum planners to complete the school on time. Like hundreds at the construction site, Maher expects to remove his hard hat for the first time on Tuesday, Aug. 29, when students start arriving.

"We'll be working full-speed until then, I'm sure," Maher said. "But we'll be ready for our great students and staff with one of the finest schools ever built."

Registration starts next Monday for middle school students, although the 1,057 sixth, seventh and eighth-graders assigned to attend Hart will register at Foothill High School because of ongoing construction work at their new campus.

With Hart now completed, enrollment at both Harvest Park and PMS is expected to drop back to the 900-1,000 student range the schools were built to handle. Last year, 12,200 students attended Pleasanton public schools, with approximately a fourth of them in the two middle schools. That surge in the pre-teen and teen-age population is expected to continue for the next several years, although the district has noticed slowing growth rates at the kindergarten and primary grade levels.

Pleasanton now has 14 schools, with Hearst - its ninth elementary school - to be opened late this year. Another elementary school - Neal - is planned for a site on Vineyard Avenue east of Montevino Drive, although final site planning and construction have delayed the scheduled opening of that school until at least 2002.

Unless the Pleasanton school board pursues its consideration of a possible fourth high school, Neal would complete Pleasanton's post-war school construction program that started with Alisal Elementary School, which opened in 1952. Amador Valley High School and the old Pleasanton school at Bernal and First Street - now Village High and part of the school district's headquarters complex - were built before World War II.

In recent years, the city of Pleasanton has contributed to the construction of new middle school athletic facilities as part of a joint city-school district operating agreement. At Hart, Pleasanton paid $2 million of the school district's $3.3 million on the new gymnasium.

Stuart Lawson, Pleasanton's recreation supervisor, said the new gym was designed with separate public lockers, offices and entrances so that city-sponsored programs can be conducted there in the evenings, weekends, holidays and during school vacations and summer months.

"The new gym has an 84 by 50-foot full basketball court and three cross courts measuring 74 by 48 feet," Lawson said. "This will help us expand the city's popular youth basketball program. We'll also now have room for up to nine badminton courts at a time on this new gym floor because of its superior layout."

Jim Wolfe, director of Parks and Community Services, said the added indoor and outdoor facilities at Hart mean new opportunities for Pleasanton to initiate more youth programs.

"Our Youth Master Plan committee is considering additional organized after-school activities, especially for the vulnerable middle school student age group," Wolfe explained. "With Hart now open, we would be in a position to offer recreational programs that are designed for this age group."

"Pleasanton is truly unique in its success with these combined city-school projects," he added. "Other cities just don't have the intense cooperative spirit that we have to make this work." Besides its gym, Hart Middle School also features: ¥ An indoor-outdoor multi-purpose area with a stage that can be opened onto either indoor or outdoor tables or both during favorable weather for concerts, assemblies and other student activities; ¥ Computers and television sets in every classroom; ¥ Science and fine arts classroom buildings with state-of-the-art computerized equipment; ¥ Its own, student-operated television and radio stations, with radio broadcasts during school hours on 93.3FM; and, ¥ Outdoor ticket windows for convenient, fast purchases for upcoming events.

School Superintendent Mary Frances Callan said that the opening of Thomas S. Hart Middle School "will enrich the lives of students in grades 6-8 throughout our community because it allows all three middle schools to move ahead toward the shared vision of our board of trustees and our leadership team."

"'Kids Come First' is more than just a printed slogan for those of us who work in Pleasanton's public schools," she added. "Our focus, through our strategic plan, is on helping every student achieve. We are very fortunate to have such a beautiful facility, made possible in large part by the farsighted Impact Fee Agreement between our school district, the city and local developers. How appropriate that this wonderful new school is named after someone who, by all accounts, was an exemplary educator, an outstanding citizen, and - above all - an individual who cared about kids."

Principal Maher agreed.

"It's an honor and a pleasure to be the first principal of this school," Maher said. "Tom Hart hired me right out of college and always had an intense interest in schools, students and the teaching staff. He was a wonderful man."

Hart was principal at Alisal for one year and then principal at the old Pleasanton elementary school for 14 years. He and his wife Mary Hart had seven children, including Mary Hart Reding, now a teacher at Alisal. Active with the Pleasanton Lions Club and at St. Augustine's Catholic Church, he was also president of the Amador Valley Teacher Association.

After his death, friends and colleagues established the Tom Hart Memorial Scholarship Fund, which continues to be one of the most prestigious awards given to local graduating seniors.

Steve Maher was a student teacher at Harvest Park when Tom Hart hired him for a full-time position at Fairlands Elementary School. He also taught at Vintage Hills, Alisal and Donlon elementary schools, before being named principal at Pleasanton Middle School.

Maher and his wife Tina, senior property administrator at the Livermore National Laboratory, have three daughters. Kelly Maher teaches fourth grade at Valley View Elementary School; Shay Maher Galletti teaches fourth grade at the new Hearst school, and Lindsay Maher, a recent graduate of Santa Clara University, is in a graduate program at St. Mary's.

"Hopefully, we'll get her here next year," Maher said. <@$p>