Lessons won’t start in the new Westside school until after the Christmas break, but the building was buzzing with activity this week as Westside kids began to learn about their new school home.

Although Park County School District No. 1 held an opening ceremony last week, the kids had their own ribbon-cutting event Monday afternoon. Principal Brent Walker spoke briefly to the students about how the state of Wyoming had provided the $9 million building and about their responsibility to take care of it so it will be nice for younger students coming behind them.

“For some of you, your own children might come to this school, so you want to take care of it,” Walker said.

Walker then handed a “big pair of scissors” to Student Council President Jazlyn Haney, who cut the ribbon, and children set off with their teachers to find their classrooms and begin learning about their new school. Each of them carried a passport, and as they visited each room, they received a sticker with a picture of that room to place in their passport.

The building plan for the new Westside is similar to the Southside school completed in 2007, but there are differences in the interior layout requested by Walker and his staff. The most notable difference is the location of the instructional media center, or library, which is centrally located and just inside the front door.

“We wanted to make the IMC the center of the school,” Walker said. “What we’re about is reading, and we talked about how we could make it the hub of the building.”

A stop at the gym reveals another feature unique to Westside: a climbing wall. The wall was a popular feature in the old school. It was preserved when the building was demolished, then installed in the gym.

Out on the playground, a small hill on the southwest corner, which the district had planned to eliminate due to maintenance concerns, remains as a place to play during recess.

“The kids really liked the hill, so we kept it,” Walker said. “(The district) modified it with a longer slope to make maintenance easier.”

The location of the playground protects it from the prevailing wind direction, Walker said, and the building’s orientation will allow it to pick up warmth from the sun in the winter.

The new school replaces a building built to accommodate an approach to education that involved team teaching and large groups, and Walker said this one is built for a different approach.

“Today, we’re all about individualizing learning,” Walker said. “There’s small group seating in the classrooms and seven breakout rooms for individualized instruction.”

Individualized instruction is further enabled by cutting-edge technology, Walker said. Each room has individualized computer stations, and there are two computer labs that can accommodate entire classes for individualized instruction to help them meet standards.

As it does in the other new schools in Powell, technology also enhances security and safety in the building, and ground-source heating and cooling keeps the building comfortable.

“This is a regular school for today, not yesterday, and hopefully it’s a school for the future,” Walker said.

The main objective in the design, Walker said, was providing a school where kids would be comfortable, and a school that is attractive, because “that makes a difference to kids.”

“We really tried to create an environment where kids really felt at home,” Walker said. “We wanted a design that would lend itself to a non-institutional feel. The building is for the kids.”

As the kids filled their passports Tuesday afternoon, their excitement about their new school home was apparent. It was best expressed by Bonnie Fauskee’s first grade students as they waited to visit the next stop on their tour.

Asked what they thought of their new school, they answered enthusiastically and unanimously.

“Awesome!”