Old High Students Get First Look Into Renovation Process
Sam Hoisington
January 29, 2025
Surveyors working to create advanced 3D models of Old High Middle School took a break from their regular work to present to a packed house of students last Friday, Jan. 24.
The original parts of Old High Middle School, located at 406 NW 2nd St., opened almost 100 years ago. With numerous expansions and renovation projects since it first opened, the district lacks reliable and comprehensive blueprints of the facility.
The surveying work is one of the first steps in the district’s process to create a new master plan for downtown schools, which are the district’s oldest facilities and have higher maintenance costs than newer schools.
The district has been discussing the creation of a master plan for about a year and recently received funding from the Walton Family Foundation to develop it.
While adjoining R.E. Baker Elementary School may be demolished, district communication director Leslee Wright said that the plan was to renovate — not sell or tear down — Old High.
An early scan of the building.
A Century Of Changes
While introducing Kelvin Jolalpa, a surveyor with Existing Conditions, to the students on Friday, Old High Principal Leslie Lyons brought up the building’s historic nature.
“It’s really important that we take care of our space because it is so old,” Lyons said. “It’s really important to our community, so part of taking care of that space is figuring out what is in that space.”
Jolalpa showed the students initial scans of the building and explained how the company’s equipment works.
The “reality capture” machines spin, capturing “2 million dots a second” using multiple camera lenses and laser technology, he said.
The technology dramatically speeds up the process of mapping the school — “no more pen and paper like back in the ’90s, everything’s more precise,” Jolalpa said.
To make his explanations of the advanced imagery process more relatable, Jolalpa took a 3D scan of the student audience.
As he revealed the scan on a projector, zooming in on students in the back of the room, the students roared with excitement, with one particularly enthusiastic, “what the heck!” rising above the rest of the crowd noise.
The Learning Opportunity
In organizing the presentation, Lyons saw an opportunity to introduce students to the contractors that have been walking the school halls recently — and give students ideas for future career opportunities.
“One of the reasons that I asked if they would come talk to you is because I didn’t know that this job, what they do, existed in the world,” she told the students. “And I’m always wanting you guys to know that there’s so much out there.”
Two sixth graders — Molly Morrison and Abel Daubney — helped The Bentonville Bulletin take notes and shared their thoughts on the presentation afterward.
Morrison felt the most interesting part of the presentation was learning that the cameras “can do a whole 360” and that they “see more details then what you really notice in real life … It gets all the tiny details.”
Daubney thought the presentation showed “just the range of all the jobs there are throughout the world.”