BELLOWS FALLS — Renovations at the Bellows Falls Middle School are nearly complete, but the project will take at least through January to finish, according to Windham Northeast Supervisory Union Superintendent Chris Kibbe.
The first day of school on Sept. 17 found the students “excited” and “happy,” according to the teachers interviewed.
Last-minute project delays postponed the first day of school at BFMS from Aug. 28 to this week.
“I've never seen so many kids happy to be back at school,” Afterschool Programs Director Oriann Baez said with a smile.
The teachers can only attribute this excitement to the new digs on the first and fourth floors.
Classrooms have new ceilings, lighting, paint, and “windows that open now,” according to Kibbe.
He pointed to the windows over doors to the classrooms, now sealed shut to comply with fire codes.
Before the renovation, “Teachers had to open these to keep air circulating,” Kibbe explained.
Now, a new ventilation system painted royal purple has been installed and is clearly visible in the first-floor gym, along with big ceiling fans over the gym floor.
“We were also able to get new bleachers as well,” Kibbe said.
But perhaps the first thing kids noticed was the new entrance to the first floor in front of the school.
Over the door, the name of the school is engraved in solid Vermont granite, designed to fit nicely with the original façade of the school that includes inscriptions to “enter to learn” and “go forth to serve” on the site of the old high school building, which burned in 1925. The façade still sports that legend.
The wide granite entryway leads in through double doors that are “very secure now” to a reception area where Receptionist Dania Clough's office sits, front and center. All children coming to school will enter here.
“I see them all,” Clough said.
To the right of the reception area is a wall covered with shiny, clear-glass mosaics that draw the hands of both children and adults as they pass by.
School nurse Laura Lober, leaving the building, said, “It just drew my hand. I had to touch it.”
A walk-through
Kibbe arrived and started the tour of the new facilities. On the first floor after the gym, the room to the north just across from the boys' and girls' respective locker rooms is another glass-walled room, temporarily the art room, which will become the weight room.
The floors in the hallways have been replaced, and the walls opposite are refinished and clean.
Around the corner on the east side of the gym, two more rooms sport the curvilinear glass walls that wind around purple-painted supports, while opposite directional lighting creates curving arch shadows on the newly painted wall.
“It's pretty,” Kibbe said of the atmosphere the design creates. “It's not just a chute.”
Going upstairs, past the second floor where renovations have it closed off still, Kibbe shows the old entrance, with its original murals, ironwork rails, lighting, and grill work intact.
“Right now, access is closed off, but it will open up again once this is all done,” he said.
“They built this place right,” he added. “You can't build a new school today with these windows or details.”
Kibbe, who attended the Middle School himself, said he used to come in through one of the side doors, pointing it out as he trudges up the stairwell. The history of many small hands has worn into the darkened grain of the railings on one side.
“We tried to preserve as much as we could,” Kibbe said. The other railing is new and “we had to put this in for fire codes,” he said. But the feel of the smooth wooden railing, again, draws the hand.
New teachers, new digs
Upstairs on the fourth floor are most of the newly renovated and functioning classrooms and administration offices, “for now,” Kibbe said.
New furniture in some of the rooms include “fully functioning whiteboards” that are attached to computers and will be interactive, he said, as well as new lighting and, of course, the front-facing windows that “open and close” are the highlights.
The library/computer lab on the east side of the fourth floor still needs to be unpacked and set up, but the room is being used some now and will be ready “soon,” Kibbe noted.
A new math room was a bit noisy at the end of the day, said teacher Rob Oakes as Kibbe made the rounds. The superintendent said that he would talk to the contractors.
Next door, Kibbe encountered a new science teacher in the brand-spanking-new science classroom.
Erica Bizaoui, all smiles as she explained an experiment that she started the year off with, said that she taught at Hartford before and “this is so much better. The kids really want to be here,” she said.
Deb Davis teaches world geography and history and agreed that there was an unmistakable air of excitement that all the kids showed on their first day of school.
“I've never seen them like this, ever. It wasn't just one class or age group. All the kids were excited to be back in school,” she said, smiling.
Some work in the kitchen and cafeteria on the second floor will be completed over Christmas break, and Kibbe said that “hopefully by the end of January, everything and everyone will be in place … barring anything [else happening],” he said with a shrug.
'It's just nice'
Outside, a couple of 10-year-old skateboarders, new to the school this year, were using the new walks. How do they like their new school?
“We like it,” one said.
Why?
“I don't know. It's just nice. It's a lot nicer than the last place we went.”
The renovations are imaginative, necessary, and are already contributing to an excitement to be there to learn, he said.
“If kids want to be here, we can't ask for more,” Kibbe said, smiling.