ATHOL — What better way to break in a new gymnasium than with an indoor recess?
Cloud cover and rain accompanied the first day of classes at the brand-new $44 million Athol Community Elementary School on Tuesday, but Principal Mike Leander found a way to get the students moving and pump out any first-day jitters. With youngsters lining the perimeter of the gym’s basketball court, Leander explained the indoor recess would consist of a freestyle dance game in which students had to sit down when the music stopped and get up when it resumed.
The gym resembled a well-lit juvenile nightclub for 25 minutes, with dozens of students dancing wildly all over the room to songs like “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. The young dancers then went to the cafeteria one room over for a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or popcorn chicken with mashed potatoes, vegetables, a fruit cup and a bread roll.
The rooms outside the gymnasium were all business. Students entered their new classrooms for the first time and Leander walked through much of the building, popping into classrooms and introducing himself.
“You guys have great teachers,” he told the fourth-graders in Mr. Guilbault’s classroom. “And you know what you have when you have great teachers? You have great schools.”
Athol-Royalston Regional School Committee member Mitchell Grosky, who could be seen walking the hallways admiring the new two-story building, said the school’s students and their parents are lucky to have Leander as principal. Grosky, who served as principal in a few area elementary schools after working as a teacher in the district, also said the school’s opening ushers in a new era of public education in the Athol area.
The first day of school is typically in late August, but Leander said it was scheduled for Sept. 6 this year to give faculty and staff more time to prepare the new building, which includes lockers for the students.
An unidentified child could be heard admiring the tiles in the hallways.
“The floor looks so beautiful,” he said. “I’ve never been so happy to see a floor before.”
The school also has a parents room to the immediate right after entering the school. Assistant Principal Anne Diaz has said it was the building committee’s idea to have a space that could double as a PTO meeting room and a place where parents and guardians could wait for their student if they arrive early for pick-up or if there is a specific issue that needs addressing.
The building sports 31 classrooms, a room for physical therapy and occupational therapy (PT/OT), a gymnasium, and an outdoor courtyard, among other features. Diaz previously said this year’s enrollment is around 550 for pre-kindergarten through fourth grade, though pre-k and kindergarten does not start until Sept. 12.
Diaz previously mentioned the school’s music room utilizes solar tubes that use mirrors to collect sunlight and use it as natural light in the room.
Diaz and Leander have said ACES is the consolidation of the Pleasant Street, Sanders Street and Riverbend schools. The town loaned those school buildings to the school district for educational purposes, but the Athol-Royalston Regional School Committee voted unanimously in July to return them to the town because the district no longer needs them.
You can reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 258. On Twitter: @DomenicPoli