Students all over the Iowa City School District will begin another year of classes today. And for around 330 elementary-school students, this means being the first to grace the halls of the district’s newest edition — the Buford Garner Elementary School in North Liberty.
The brand-new, $9.5 million, 25-classroom elementary school will open its doors today to a student body and 50-person staff and faculty who are equally excited to start.
“We’re very anxious to have everybody come,” said Garner Principal Mindy Paulsen. “It’s going to be a great year; we’re looking forward to it.”
Paulsen, who has worked in the district since 2000, said Garner was built to help ease the overcrowding in North Liberty’s Penn and Van Allen Elementary Schools.
Located on 80 Birch St., Garner’s students were chosen by their proximity to the new facility and announced in December last year. The majority of students come from either Penn or Van Allen and families with children in fourth and fifth grade had the option to stay at their current schools.
North Liberty resident Jason Smith said his two sons, sixth-grader Derek and third-grader Quentin, will attend Garner this year instead of Van Allen.
“Making a switch is always tough,” said Smith, but he noted that his neighborhood was all zoned to Garner, so students will see familiar faces.
District Superintendent Steve Murley said this aspect of neighborhood schools has been and will continue to be a valuable feature of area schools. He said he has opened several schools in other districts but the feeling is always the same.
“It’s always exciting when you open a new school,” he said. “It’s really fun to be a part of that.”
The last school built in the district was Van Allen in 2005, and Garner aims to ease the woes of ever-growing overcrowding. With property purchased on Camp Cardinal Boulevard in Coralville, the School District has another new school on the horizon.
Not yet named, “Crossings” elementary school is in the design and architectural stages of development. With an estimated cost of a little more than $12 million, the school is planned to be completed in 2012, said School Board member Tuyet Dorau.
The new two-story building would hold about 450 students. Dorau said the school would be the perfect size for students and staff — providing cost-effective administration expenditures while still maintaining the necessary community feel of elementary schools.
“With that size, we’ve seen that we can get more bang for the buck,” Dorau added.
At Garner, as students open new textbooks and shake off another summer, Paulsen and the other staff members are excited to build the personal foundation of their new school.
“Building that community and recognizing that we have kids coming from different schools, we want to now build that community of Garner and get everybody feeling like he or she is a Garner Gator now,” Paulsen said.