VERO BEACH — Principal Bonnie Swanson flitted from classroom to classroom in the hour leading up to Vero Beach Elementary’s closing ceremony Friday, asking if the Little Indians were having a good last day. “Yeah!” many exclaimed in the third grade classes. “No!” shouted one boy. “It’s great, but I don’t want to leave!”
Others echoed the same sentiment.
Walking to another wing, Swanson expressed something similar.
“It’s an ambivalent feeling,” she said, walking to what was the Media Center and has since become a staging area for towers of packed boxes. “It’s hard to say goodbye.”
Scanning the room, Swanson said, “The boxes keep growing. They just keep growing.”
For eight years, Swanson has overseen the students, classrooms and faculty at Vero Beach Elementary. Starting this fall, with the 2012-13 school year, Swanson will continue to oversee the day-to-day activities at the school – next door, when the newest version of Vero Beach Elementary opens.
The School District spent approximately $20 million to build a new campus onsite for Vero Beach Elementary. The current school had problems with its electrical and mechanical systems and its roof and was in need of a new and better lighting system, school officials have said.
Monday is the official moving day for the elementary school, when faculty and volunteers begin moving boxes from the old Vero Beach Elementary to the new.
“Can we take one of the bricks?” asked one third grade girl when Principal Swanson popped her head into the classroom.
“The bricks are turning to dust,” Swanson replied. “That’s part of the problem.”
The current Vero Beach Elementary School opened in 1972, replacing the original campus, which opened in 1957 under Principal Bill McClure.
McClure was on hand Friday to say goodbye to the school that had replaced his.
“Things have changed greatly,” he said, but not the character of the school.
“The students are so cooperative,” McClure said. “The parents, too, are cooperative. It’s just an excellent atmosphere.”
McClure served as the first Vero Beach Elementary principal from 1957 to 1964, when he was tapped to be principal at the then-new Vero Beach High School. Two years later, he became an assistant superintendent in the School District and later the Schools Superintendent for a decade.
Once everything has been moved out of the current campus, demolition will begin.
Part of the property will be used for a playground, another part will serve as the new parent drop-off loop. There will also be a new 12-foot deep lake for storm water retention.
The only building from the current campus that will remain standing is the computer lab. But it won’t remain a computer lab, Swanson said. Instead, it will be repurposed for physical education and a multi-purpose room.
The new school campus is built to green specifications and will use a thermal energy storage system, cutting power costs and resulting in rebates from Florida Power and Light. There will also be hydroponic and raised gardens, using water from cisterns meant to catch rainwater.
“We could be LEED certified (for green construction),” Swanson said, but the district would have to pay $100,000 to seek such certification.
Among those in the audience for the school’s closing ceremony was former Vero Beach Elementary mom Donna Green, whose son, Daniel, graduated from the school in 1987.
“‘They can’t tear it down,’” Green recalled Daniel saying when he heard the school would be demolished and rebuilt.
“He just enjoys his memories,” Green said of her son, explaining that he’s made his peace with the School District’s plans. He is currently serving in the US Army and is stationed in Afghanistan, helping to teach Afghans to stabilize their villages.
“Closing a building is very significant,” Swanson told the assembled students inside the cafeteria during the closing ceremony. “A school – a building is only a building, the hearts in the building make it a school.”