Officials say new Pine Bluffs Elementary already benefits students

The new school’s gym even reflects the nest through honeycomb designs on the wooden floor.

Principal Andrea Verosky said the students first attended the new school on Nov. 27. They took a full week off for Thanksgiving break to ensure the teachers and staff had plenty of time to move all their materials over.

Lisa Gilbert, a fifth- and sixth-grade math and science teacher, said, “When we made the transition to the new school, it was like a breath of fresh air for all of us. It rejuvenated everybody.”

The move is so fresh that some things still are missing – like the school’s Christmas tree. So they built four small Christmas trees out of giant Lego blocks. They’re in a large open area that the students and faculty can use as collaborative space, for games during indoor recess and for a variety of other purposes.

Verosky said they special-ordered the Legos while they were in the Historic High School. They used the Legos as office partitions.

“We didn’t have an office, so we were just in a classroom. We made an office out of those giant Legos,” Verosky.

Many of the Legos that aren’t in use as Christmas trees are in the school’s library.

Kim Nelson, facilities manager for Laramie County School District 2, said the building is nearly 35,000 square feet and cost about $8.5 million.

Cheyenne contractor 5R began work on the school in summer 2016. They had planned to have the school completed in time for Laramie County School District 2 to take possession of it before school started this fall. Several setbacks prevented that from happening.

First, they discovered more asbestos than anticipated in the building. They later encountered some challenges with missing and unmarked sewer lines.

The new school stands on the same spot the old school occupied.

“That was really important to the community because it is here in the center of town and a focal point in the town,” Verosky said.

The location is important enough to the community that the town council signed over ownership of a block of Elm Street and allowed the school district to connect its property to the park across the street.

Elm Street is no longer a through street, and cars have to drive a block over to get around the property.

Nelson said extending the school’s property all the way to the park makes the campus look larger, provides better traffic control and keeps the kids safer.

The community helped create an emblem for the school as well. It includes images of a train, cows, wheat and the bluffs with pine trees. The emblem is prominently displayed on a gold-and-purple rug just inside the front doors.

Although the Hornets are nesting there, the entrance to the building somewhat resembles a train station. That pays homage to the trains that run through town, Verosky said.

Verosky said the new school is a large improvement over both the old elementary school and the Historic High School.

“It was wonderful that we had that facility to go to, but we were in every nook and cranny and closet, so actually having rooms that were made for our age level of students and their needs – it’s just been very, very nice for our kids,” Verosky said.

She added that four classrooms were meeting in modular classrooms while they were in the Historic High School.

“It’s a lot safer to all be in one building, and it also is more of a community,” she said.

Gilbert said the classrooms also are more up-to-date with technology than the Historic High School.

“It served its purpose, but it was darker, and we didn’t have any updated technology. I had chalkboards in my room,” she said.

Spencer Rabou, a sixth-grader in the school, said he can see the board better in the new school.

“The classrooms are bigger here, and at the other school, the classrooms weren’t very big, so you couldn’t see anything,” he said.

Merina Thoebald, a fifth-grader at Pine Bluffs Elementary, said she likes the clean bathrooms and the triangle desks in the classrooms.

Teachers can easily group the triangular desks into squares of four desks that allow students to have an entire side to themselves and all the elbow room they could want.

Merina said she also loves the stage in the gym. The students used it for their holiday program Tuesday night.

The one frustration the school community is experiencing is that the playground can’t be installed until the ground thaws, so the kids are playing mainly in the park, Verosky said. But that’s where they spent recess during construction, so it’s not a terrible inconvenience.

5R still is completing a few other small projects at the school as well. On Wednesday, men were working on the school’s sign above the front doors.