Farewell to the Original East Side ES

After making several significant additions and utilizing several trailers to house its fourth-grade class, the East Side Elementary School gave the 59-year-old landmark institution a joyous farewell Thursday evening.

The well-attended event welcomed current and former students, staff and community members to recollect fond memories of the school that opened as the only eastside elementary option.

Throughout the school’s history, it has kept its small, neighborhood school feel. That closeness was celebrated Thursday as school officials and parents opened the campus to the public.

The Dodgen Middle School Jazz Band welcomed the hundreds of visitors as they played outside of the school’s original entrance. Visitors could also purchase a $25 brick from the soon-to-be demolished building as part of a fundraiser.

“We’re just very community based,” said Elizabeth Mavity, East Side’s fifth-year principal who was the school’s assistant principal for four years before her promotion. “It’s like a little neighborhood school, but we’re over 1,000 kids and that’s been growing. When I came in, it was 750 students.”   

The replacement of East Side appears long overdue. When it opened, it boasted 11 classrooms in one building and had an enrollment of 314 students from first- to eighth-grade. Since then, 37 classrooms and more than a dozen trailers have been added to its ever-changing landscape over the years to keep up with the school’s continually growing enrollment.

Mavity said the school currently has nearly 1,100 students in kindergarten through fifth-grade.

“I don’t think I’ve seen another school patched so many times to have enough room for the students,” said teacher Nancy (Hawkins) Robinson, a 25-year educator. “I feel like I’ve gone full circle because I started here in third grade and I’ll be retiring from here.”

Construction for the new three-story building began in February 2010 and it will be completed for the start of the 2011-12 school year in August. The school’s opening can’t come soon enough for many as it will bring all of the East Side students under one roof instead of being separated throughout the campus as they are now.

“I’m in the trailers, so I’m excited to go in the building,” fourth-grader Avni Sawant said.

Avni’s mother, Jayshree, is “absolutely” looking forward to the unveiling of the $14.9 million school. It will boast 69 classrooms and eliminate the use of trailers or “cottages,” as East Side PTA Co-President Jill Butler referred to them.

“We’ll have a parking lot, all the kids will be in one building, instead of spread out in trailers, a bigger cafeteria and a bigger gym, so it’s going to be wonderful,” said Jayshree Sawant, a former two-time PTA East Side co-vice president.

Butler has watched the building’s construction steadily gain momentum thanks to living in the adjoining Indian Hills subdivision. She said moving into the long awaited new East Side will begin soon.

“Teachers are starting to pack now because their rooms have to be completely empty by May 26, the day after school ends,” she said.

Robinson likely will have a much deeper appreciation for the new school than many of the current students, faculty and parents.

Thursday evening, she easily remembered her first year at the school in 1959 as a third-grader in Mrs. Sewell’s class. She recalled the school housing 200-300 students in first through eighth-grade, but noted how the original building can now only accommodate the second-grade class. She also reflected on when the current media center was the school’s lunchroom and kitchen.

But with all the changes she has seen at East Side Elementary, the nostalgia she obviously has for the building and school won’t keep her from being ready to move on from it. The new building will usher an end to the awkward way students and faculty have been forced to exist due to the construction and growing enrollment.

Robinson said that when tornado warnings are sounded, the fourth-grade has to leave its portable classrooms and find space in the school’s main building, either in the music and art rooms or in the computer lab. She also won’t miss having to ferry the school’s laptop cart to different buildings or be forced to leave the cart at a location when it rains. The new building will have two computer labs.

“It’s been bad, but we’re going to appreciate the new building,” she said with a big smile.

Download the movie