• DCSD School Board Approves Table Mound Addition
• Lt. Governor Addresses Table Mound 6th Grade Students
• Board Gives... Thumbs Up
• Contract Awarded
• Groundbreaking Ceremony
• Geothermal

Dr. Kris Hall, Table Mound principal, addresses the DCSD school board on Monday, January 14, 2002.

Fifth and sixth grade TAG students patiently wait to share their proposed blueprints for the new addition.

Student Council members introduce Lt. Governor Sally Pederson to their classmates.

Table Mound Dr. Seuss Library was the chosen site as DCSD school board members, students, staff, and community members gathered for Lt. Governor Sally Pederson's address.

Ms. Pederson visits with DCSD board members following her presentation.

Board Gives... Thumbs Up

January 29, 2002
On Monday, January 28th, the Dubuque Community School Board gave an unanimous thumbs up to amend the contract with the Durrant Group to a $3,052,486 addition to Table Mound. The original plan at 2.2 million did not include geothermal heating and cooling, added less space and used cheaper materials.

The additional money will provide a 18,300 square feet of classrooms, art and music rooms, offices and a gymnasium with a wood floor and bleacher seating.

Construction is slated to begin during the summer of 2002 and be ready for students and staff at the start of the 2003-2004 school year.

July 22, 2002

The contract for the 18,500 square foot addition has been awarded to Prism Corp. Southeast, of Kieler Wisconsin who submitted a bid of $3,065,690. The addition will house six additional classrooms, gymnasium, music rooms and offices. Several years ago many families were redistricted due to overcrowding. The additional space will allow children to return to their neighborhood school. The addition is slated to open when the children return for the 2003-2004 school year.

The artist's rendering of the addition is shown above. The highest windows are located in the gymnasium and the long line of windows just below, light the corridor between the classrooms. Some of the new space will also provide additional room for our Neighborhood Resource Center, which opened in April 2002.

August 8, 2002

On a beautiful August morning more than 100 community members, staff, students, and parents gathered to participate in the addition groundbreaking ceremony for Table Mound School. The long-awaited, and much-needed addition to the overcrowded school is now a reality thanks to the hard work of many district personal and a one million dollar Vision Iowa Grant. It is expected to open in the Fall of 2003.

Dr. Kris Hall, principal, welcomed the many who gathered to participate. He personally thanked the many individuals who served as catalyst for the addition. Together with John Burgart, Interim Superintendent of Dubuque Community Schools, and DCSD school board members, Dr. Hall turned the first shovel of dirt for the new construction. Following the initial ground breaking students, staff, parents, and community members joined in. They donned hard hats, grabbed a gold shovel and took turns breaking ground.

An important part of the ceremony included naming the main hallway in the addition. In appreciation for the countless hours and dedication to the efforts of the addition the new hallway will bear the name Joe Link Lane in honor of retiring DCSD Finance Manager, Joe Link.

Student Authors

Table Mound School in Dubuque, Iowa is getting geothermal heating and cooling from the earth this year. Geothermal heating and cooling seems to be the best way to heat and cool your house (or school) and also save energy. There are 147 wells that are 300 feet
deep being drilled on our playground. We are doing this to save fossil fuels. Our building, next year, will be 72 degrees all year round with no univent blowers making our classrooms so noisy and with a much more stable type of heating and cooling. We’re getting it by pumping either hot or cool air to the surface of the earth.

If a mass of rock or water below ground is hotter than its surroundings, the heat can be recovered as “geothermal energy”. Geothermal energy is the heat from the Earth. It’s clean and a sustainable resource. Geothermal energy ranges from the shallow ground to hot water and hot rock four miles beneath the Earth’s surface, and down even deeper to the extremely high temperatures of molten rock called magma. Geothermal pumps can tap into this resource to heat and cool buildings.

Hot dry rock resources occur at depths of 3 to 5 miles everywhere beneath the Earth’s surface and at lesser depths in certain areas. Hot water near the surface of the earth can be used for heat. But no one knows how much of the nonrenewable resources remain. These nonrenewable resources are the ones we usually use for our heating and cooling. Uranium and coal will last several centuries, but oil and gas are less abundant and may soon run out. Oil will last at least 45 more years. Gas will last at least 76 more years. And coal will last at least 521 years. Thus if everyone took the example of Table Mound School and used geothermal energy, we would have more resources for the future.

Student Authors

Geothermal Energy at Table Mound
By Grade 3 students from Ms. Schroeder's room

Table Mound Elementary School in Dubuque, Iowa, is putting in geothermal heat wells on half of the playground. No, not water wells, and definitely not oil wells, but
geothermal heat wells. Some people think that if you dig deep enough you will dig into buried treasure. We really are finding treasure! Our treasure is heating and cooling our school. Some people want gold, but we want heat and cooling. Geothermal is a source of heat and cooling. The workers started digging up our soccer field in April. They are digging 147 wells each 300 feet deep. They have a long way to go, but they are on the right road now.

A couple of kids have different feelings about the workers digging and cutting their playground in half, but as soon as the workers are done we will have our playground
back. The workers dug a hole in our blacktop too. They covered it up. The Dubuque Schools are doing this to make the world a better place so there are enough fossil fuels
for the future. Table Mound is doing many things like this to protect the world and make it easier for people to live on this planet.

Geothermal energy will make Table Mound 72 degrees Fahrenheit all year long, no matter how warm or cold the outside temperature is. Teachers and students are now
packing up all of their books and supplies and moving them to the multipurpose room so that the ceiling fixtures for geothermal can be installed. Units are being put in place right now on our roof, both old and new sections.