Principal Karissa Lang said the school’s enrollment has steadily increased over the years. This year, there are 718 students, and the 10,000-square-foot school has room for up to 1,000 students. Students began moving into the new school in May, just before the end of last school year.
Large windows provide plenty of natural light in the library of the new Crestline Elementary School. Photo by Jeronimo Nisa.
Parents and families formed lines of cars in front of and behind the school to drop off their children, so traffic ran smoothly despite the large number of students on Thursday.
“Because we have that drop-off lane for kindergarten through fourth graders in the back, all of that traffic can avoid Crestline Drive,” Lang said. “Now we have the new drop-off lane for preschool and (special needs) children, so we’ll have about 200 kids dropped off in the front. The way the long driveway is also allows traffic in that line of cars to avoid Crestline Drive.”
The total number of preschool students this year is 179. The preschool programs, previously spread across three elementary schools, are now centralized in Crestline.
Lang said workers will continue to clear rubble from the old school, which was demolished in June, over the next few weeks, but the school’s old gymnasium will be used for the preschool program.
Preschool teacher Lauren Brock comes to the new facility from FE Burleson after teaching kindergarten and preschool there for 10 years.
“Our main goal is to make sure they’re ready for school,” Brock said. “We want them to learn how to go to school, how to interact with others, how to share. That way, they’ll be ready when they start kindergarten next year. Kindergarten is much more advanced today than it used to be.”
In the back, workers were busy spreading mulch on the school’s three new playgrounds: one for the preschool program, one for children with special needs, and one for the general population. The playgrounds for children with special needs and the general population are right next to each other.
Students walk to their classroom at the new Crestline Elementary School in Hartselle on Thursday. Photo by Jeronimo Nisa.
“This way they can play with each other if they want to and they won’t be alienated from each other,” Lang said.
Lang said Crestline students have not had access to a playground for the past two school years because equipment was put in storage during construction of the new school. She said students should be able to use the playgrounds on Monday, which can’t come soon enough for some of the school’s students.
“I feel like there will be a lot more things to play with and we will have a lot more fun outside,” said fourth-grader Hannah Smallwood.
“A lot of people have been going to the old school for a long time and this building is something new,” said fourth-grader Lucy Hulgan.
Hulgan and Smallwood, along with classmate Eliza Jane Green, plan to apply to be the new school’s first school ambassadors this year. Lang said they will select the ambassadors next month.
Further down the hall, students this week will be treated to a music room filled with bongos with custom-painted shells and other instruments, an improvement over the freestanding building outside the old school. Music teacher Liz Bass said having a classroom inside the facility makes her feel more connected to her fellow teachers.
“I love it. I love watching the kids go by, and it’s just so nice to be right around the corner and be able to get to everyone really quickly and easily,” Bass said.
Bass teaches music to each class once a week and coordinates the musical performances of each grade level that take place throughout the year. The introduction of an “Art Day” is planned for this school year.
“During the Christmas season, we will be doing a different program for each grade level and I will be doing a patriotic program for the third and fourth graders because I think it’s really important to teach them patriotism,” Bass said.
Lang said a larger STEM lab will allow teachers to expand lessons and introduce students to new projects, and teachers using the school’s new outdoor classroom will be able to teach students more about local flora and wildlife. The outdoor classroom includes a turtle habitat, water catchment system, pond, raised flower beds and a dry creek bed.
“It’s bigger, which is what we needed, and we can set up more learning stations,” Lang said. “This outdoor classroom is meant to be a learning area, and we’ve never had a place where we could take a class out into a shaded area where teachers could teach and do more hands-on things, but now we can.”
