By Katie Stallcup

Published: May 7, 2008

The paint has dried, and the bulletin boards are filled with colorful letters. Now, all that’s needed is the children.

The smell of new carpet greeted Auburn City Council members when they visited the brand-new Richland Road Elementary School this week.

Council members peered into classrooms and asked questions on a guided tour of the new school.

“The building you see is basically Yarborough and Ogletree (elementary schools) rebuilt,” said Dr. Terry Jenkins, superintendent for the Auburn City Schools. “We looked at it from the perspective of, ‘Why pay full price to an architect to redesign a building that is basically functional if we can just upgrade it?’”

Although the floor plan basically matches those two schools, the designs were modified to increase energy efficiency and security, Jenkins said.

Instead of entering directly into the school, visitors must pass through the front office to get to classrooms. The traffic flow provides a separate entrance for school busses and cars, diverting them to opposite sides of the school.

In addition, classroom lights are connected to motion sensors, so the light turns off when no one’s in the room, saving electricity.

Outside the building, the entrance onto Richland Road was redesigned, and a traffic light is planned to help make it safer, Jenkins said.

The student and teacher makeup will mirror that of other schools, he said, and some teachers from the students’ current schools will move to Richland, making the new environment more familiar.
The city’s sixth elementary school cost approximately $10 million.

“The city council members… seemed pleased with what the school system has done,” City Manager Charlie Duggan said. “… It’s going to be a wonderful school. It’s a great addition to the City of Auburn’s school system.”

The elementary school was a good investment for the community, Jenkins said. Eventually, the elementary school students would rise through the grades until they reached high school. Because of a recent Auburn High School expansion, a tough decision is still years away, he said.

“The day will come when they’ll look at another (high school) building,” he said.

Jenkins recommended building a school for grades 10 through 12 and using the current high school for grades seven through nine.

“Once you build a second high school, you divide the whole community,” he said. “So, we’re trying to avoid that as long as we can. And that’s way down the road.”