On their first day at their long-awaited new home, Mr. Salem’s third-graders were treated to a gee-whiz tour of the Hooker School on Whitney Avenue.
After seven years of planning, the new Worthington Hooker School officially opened on Monday morning. The Whitney Avenue school is now home to 284 students in grades 3 through 8.
And despite the efforts of some Everit Street residents, some of those students came to school through a pedestrian gate removed from high-speed Whitney Avenue — without incident.
Paul Salem was one of a number of Hooker teachers who spent part of the day leading their students around the new $36.5 million building.
The opening marks the end of a bitter fight with neighbors who fought to prevent the school from opening in their neighborhood. That dispute went to the State Supreme Court in 2007. More recently, the school’s opening was met with another controversy when neighbors objected to the opening of the pedestrian gate.
Neither of those battles marred Monday’s jubilant opening ceremonies. Following speeches and songs, a ceremonial ribbon was cut by current Principal Robert Rifenburg and former Principal Carol Kennedy.
After the ribbon was cut, students streamed over a footbridge between the refurbished former church and entered the brand new front building. Frosty was waiting to hold the door for them.
Rifenburg said the school opening culminates a long process and the beginning of an expanded program at Hooker. The new school is “heavy into technology,” and has improved facilities for fine arts and music, he said.
“For me it means [the end of] ten years of lots of meetings,” said Kennedy. “The reality has come through for our students. We were in a building from the 1950s.” Now students have moved “a couple centuries ahead,” with a new library and media center, Kennedy said.
“It’s the best holiday gift I could ask for,” said proud Hooker mom Jane Edelstein. She has two daughters at Hooker and a third who is a Hooker alumna. After years of bringing her daughters to various temporary swing spaces, Edelstein said she is happy the school finally has a permanent home.
Salem was showing off the features of his new ground-floor classroom. He pointed out new storage space and an in-classroom drinking fountain.
Salem then led his students on a tour around the school. They walked up the glass-fronted stairwell past other classes of kids on tours of their own.
Winding through the boxes of books in the new library, Salem called out, “Take a look at all the shelves, all the space for the books.”
The third-graders then traveled back across the footbridge. “That’s not walking!” said Salem as his students’ exuberance got the better of them.
After peeking at the auditorium, the students went down to the new cafeteria. There they resisted the temptation of snatching snacks left over from the morning’s ceremony.
Then it was back out in the hall, past the to-be-completed gymnasium, and through the indoor passageway connecting the school’s two buildings. The next stop was the administrative offices, where Principal Rifenburg got a thumb’s up from a passing student.
“It’s phenomenal,” Salem said of the new school. He said he had enjoyed seeing the children’s faces that morning as they saw the school for the first time. “They were so excited.”
The new Hooker’s first day of school included the opening of a controversial pedestrian gate on Everit Street. Despite the heated debate caused by the presence of the gate, kids walked to school Monday without causing any disasters for the surrounding neighborhood.
Everit st did not turn into a parking lot? Property values did not fall? Much ado about nothing.
Great fight just for the sake of being against the greater good.
Hopefully this will end the the rancor, I doubt it.
Good luck kids.