Students, teachers, staff, administrators and others celebrated the opening of the new Caledonia Elementary School on Thursday with a parade from the old building and a walk-through of the new one.
Holt Winter marched from his third-grade classroom in a 45-year-old building to the newly built classroom where he will study after Christmas break.
Holt, 8, described his new school as “awesome.”
“I’m going to be the most excited person on the planet,” he said of returning to a new school.
The students will begin using their new classrooms on Jan. 3. Teachers will return on Jan. 2, and the remainder of their things will be moved to the new facility next week.
The $26 million facility, located next door to the old school, contains about 75 classrooms. Principal Roger Hill said the building will also have two art rooms and two music rooms the old school didn’t, as well as updated equipment and technology.
“I’ve waited 40 years for this, so I’m real excited,” Hill said. “For the students, it’s going to be a great learning environment, and I know it’s going to be a real bright spot for the community.
“It allows everybody to have space. We didn’t have that over there,” he added.
The new building is about 120,000 square feet, and the old building was between 80,000 and 90,000 square feet.
Hill said what he likes most about the new building is that it is self-contained, whereas students had to walk outside to navigate between four different buildings at the old location.
Background
Lowndes County School District Superintendent Lynn Wright said the district began building the new school about four years ago — financing it using LCSD reserves and about $3 million from a $44 million bond issue — because enrollment was increasing and space was running out.
Wright said more people were drawn to Caledonia because it had available and accessible land to build homes, aiding the enrollment increase in recent years. He said the school also began to see growth when Columbus Air Force Base students, previously required to attend school in the Columbus Municipal School District, were allowed to attend at Caledonia.
The elementary school had about 1,000 students five years ago and now serves 1,120 students.
“We need new facilities. Our district’s growing, so we’re trying to take care of the most critical needs first,” Wright said. “We did a needs assessment five years ago, and because of the growth at Caledonia Elementary, it became No. 1 on the priority list.”
He said it’s also part of LCSD’s comprehensive plan to replace all school facilities built in the 1950s because they aren’t energy efficient, and some have asbestos.
Caledonia schools maintenance supervisor Greg Wheat said additions to the old elementary school were needed throughout the years to accommodate enrollment growth. But the school ran out of room to expand because the middle and high schools are on one side, and streets surround it on all other sides.
“We put portable units out there. We had folks actually in the hallways having school. Music and art (classes) were on carts, going from classroom to classroom,” Wheat said.
Wright said the older portions of the school will be knocked down, and the more recent additions will be used for Caledonia Middle School.
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