The MNCS school building is as non-traditional as the program within. Students spend the majority of their day in the school atrium, a large open area that includes the main desk, all staff and student desks, a performing arts stage, and the lunchroom. In this setting, students and staff are able to communicate with each other efficiently, and under the watchful eyes of the rest of the students and staff. There are no strangers at MNCS.
Located off of the atrium is the science room, the arts studio, the resource center, and of course the silo. The science room is a multi-purpose classroom containing equipment and materials for student experiments in biology, chemistry, and other scientific discoveries. When not being used as a lab, the science room doubles as a classroom for math or other subjects as needed. On Wednesday afternoons, the science room becomes the center of student leadership at MNCS when it is taken over by the student senate for their weekly session.
The arts studio is where many MNCS students and staff retreat to when they feel the need to let their imaginations run wild. The arts studio contains a pottery wheel and kiln, materials for making stained glass or screen printing t-shirts, and a wide selection of other art supplies from a variety of different disciplines. Housed inside the arts studio is our student-built recording studio. Equipped with a soundboard, an i-mac, and a variety of recording tools and instruments, many students take advantage of this space to improve both their musicianship and technological skills.
The silo is a converted Harvestore grain silo that the school building was built around. Inside the silo is space for advisory meetings, exercise equipment, and a tv/dvd player. It also doubles as the school stage, where student and community performances are put on from time to time.
In addition, the school building also contains a greenhouse, a wood shop, a mechanics/metal shop, and a conference room. The greenhouse is used by students to do botany experiments, and every year the school grows and sells a variety of plants for a fundraiser in the spring. The wood and metal shops are places where IT minded students can create almost any kind of structure or machine that they can design. The supermilage car team spends most of their afternoons in the mechanic shop designing a car that will travel as far as possible on a specified amount of gasoline. Each spring the team takes their design to a statewide competition to see how they compare with other students. The conference room is a general purpose meeting area where classes, meetings, and other events that require some peace and quiet can be held.
Finally, the school has an ever-growing media center holding a wide variety of books, videos, software, magazines, and other resources that often come in handy when students are working on projects.
