Like leaving home

Connie Gray-Evans isn’t exaggerating when she describes Hayden Lake Elementary as her home. She’s spent her entire teaching career – 32 years – at the old brick school, not to mention most of her childhood.

As she walked down the hall toward the playground on Friday, the wooden floor transitioned to newer tile floors.

“I remember when they added this on,” Gray-Evans said. She motioned to a classroom on her right. “I was in first grade in this room.”

As the clock Friday ticked toward the final bell of the school year, Gray-Evans reminisced about the tall ponderosa pines that used to be all over the playground and about the soda fountain across the street where she’d meet her mother after school. She talked about meeting her husband when they were both students at the school and about how they later sent their own children there.

When the bell rang, children streamed out of the school, shouting with joy that summer had arrived. Unlike years past, the last bell on Friday marked the end of an era. Students and teachers will be moving to a spanking-new elementary in the fall, while Gray-Evans begins life as a retiree.

“I want to say I’m not going to miss the daily routine, but I will,” she said. “I’m going to miss the smiles on the kids’ faces, and I’m really going to miss the hugs.”

She’s looking forward to traveling and spending time outdoors. Students are looking forward to the upgrades of Atlas Elementary, nearly 70 years newer and about 20,000 square feet larger than Hayden Lake Elementary. Earlier this week, students got to tour the empty, but finished, new school.

“Some classrooms have two white boards,” first-grader Chrissy Bassiri said.

Her classmates said they liked the gymnasium, which is bigger than Hayden Lake’s. Jackson Wells said the old gym is “like 3 feet.”

“I think it’s like four times bigger,” Rhett DeWitt said of the new gym, as a friend piped in that it was “wicked sweet.” The automatic faucets and soap dispensers in Atlas’ bathrooms also got high marks from the students.

Principal Kathy Kuntz said she’ll miss the smells of the old school, an essence of chalk dust and the thousands of meals cooked in the building.

“I will totally miss the wooden floors,” she said, adding that she wanted to take a piece of them with her when she left, but the district wouldn’t stand for it. The district plans to continue using the building for other programs, business manager Steve Briggs said Friday, and possibly to house students during remodels of other schools in the district.

Kuntz said she’s looking forward to the new school, where the entire school isn’t built around the gymnasium. When students ran through the gym at Hayden Lake, Kuntz said, it felt like an earthquake. She said the echo of basketballs bouncing reverberated through the school and was “like Chinese water torture.”

First-grade teacher Amy Wise couldn’t stop the tears as she talked about leaving the school.

“I’m going to miss the charm of the old brick school,” said Wise, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “It’s a smaller school, so we’re really a close family.”

The Hayden Lake family was a great support to Gray-Evans when her husband died of cancer two years ago, and they were there for her as she moved on, remarried and started a new life.

One of the concerns teachers at the school have expressed is how a bigger school with more students might diminish the sense of closeness and intimacy they’ve grown accustomed to at Hayden Lake Elementary.

But Wise said she’s also looking forward to some of the positive influences a new school will have, like boosting student pride.

“These kids have had a great school and a great education in a school that doesn’t have the look of it,” Wise said.

“Now they’re going to get something fancy and new.”