Opening Day for Longfellow School

• Image

Longfellow Elementary Principal Joe Childs puts together office chairs Friday in order to be ready for the opening of school today. (Chris Huber/Republic Photo)

Talk about it

When the going gets tough, principals pull out the tools and do it themselves.

Longfellow Elementary School Principal Joe Childs was on his hands and knees Friday, assembling office chairs on the floor of his new school’s conference room.

“A few more volunteers would be nice,” Childs said, smiling, “but we’ll get it done.

“There’s a lot of touch-up work left to do,” he said.

Longfellow, like all Mitchell schools, opens its school year today and the first day will be a full day. The brand new school opens at 8:15 a.m. and classes run until 3:15 p.m.

Enrollment figures were not available for opening day but Superintendent Joe Graves said Friday that those numbers look good.

“I believe we’ll be even with, or perhaps ahead, of last year’s enrollment of 2,465 students,” Graves said.

About 260 children are enrolled for Longfellow’s opening day, Childs said. “And we’ll be ready,” he said. There was plentiful evidence of that. Many of the lockers — which are very spacious — were already labeled with the names of their future owners. In the large classrooms, colorful and instructive displays were up and ready for today. In the main office, staff members were working hard to create order from scattered boxes of files and books. “This all looked so good on Wednesday night,” fretted secretary Linda Deinert. On Wednesday, about 700 kids, parents and grandparents trooped through the school and got a feel for their new school. “The kids are all pretty excited,” Childs said.

It was a relief to both teachers and administrators that the school’s new geothermal heating and cooling system went online the same day.

The state-of-the-art system will use 160 geothermal wells to tap into the earth’s constant 50-degree temperature. In winter that heat will be used to warm the building, and that same subterranean coolness will temper sweltering summer temperatures.

“It feels so much better in here,” Deinert said.

The new Longfellow is wired for a modern age. In the old Longfellow, network wiring dangled from hooks along the school’s halls because there simply was no other way to run the wire.

But some work still remains to be done.

Electrical contractors scrambled Friday to finish up in the school’s kitchen and workers busied themselves on a high-lift in the library.

Computer station cabinetry must still be installed in the bright and spacious media center.

On Friday, computer network administrator Sherry Velin was busy hooking up 25 Dell computers that had been set up on folding banquet tables.

“We’re putting in a few long hours,” she said. Technicians must also ready three rolling carts — each with 25 computers. The carts will allow teachers to share computers, she said.

With floors polished and landscaping finished, the school looks ready.

The large gymnasium, which was used for storage while other interior work was completed, is the only part of Longfellow that had been scheduled for later completion. Work crews will install the gym’s hardwood floors in the next few months.

Tags: longfellow school, news, local, fccnetwork