Crane's new bells and whistles

CRANE At a certain angle, when standing on a hallway that is, for now, just a concrete floor and without a ceiling over it, the new section of the Crane Elementary School looks long and immense.

That’s what 18 classrooms, a gym and other new rooms look like.

A new wing for the pre-kindergarten through second grades is scheduled for completion in May.

Crane ISD superintendent Larry Lee said a 2007 audit looked at the age of the district’s buildings, and the elementary school was one that could use improvement. After meetings, the district decided to begin working on buildings for the youngest students.

"Research tells you if kids get off to a good start, they finish strong," Lee said. "We’re very intent on trying to do the best that we can for them."

A committee was then formed for input into the new building’s features. With a maximum price set at a $6.9 million guideline, faculty and staff members of the pre-kindergarten through third grades reviewed and revised wish lists.

"As a matter of fact, that process slowed us down a bunch because we made a lot of revisions to the first thought processes," Lee said. "People do it different. But these buildings don’t come around often, so you better get them right."

Lee said he believes Crane got it right. An emphasis was put on pre-kindergarten education, and two classrooms in the building will be devoted to full-day classes. The school currently only offers half-day pre-kindergarten classes.

Also, because of the layout of the campus, students often shuffle in and out of buildings to go to the nurse’s office or another part, making it difficult to lock the campus except for the main entrance.

The aforementioned hallway will connect the new building to the main building, which houses the third through fifth grades.

"Everyone will be under one roof for safety purposes," Lee said. "In the society we live in, you can’t be too careful."

The gym will have a rubber floor and serve as a pseudo gymatorium with a stage and the capacity for parent meetings and presentations. In the past, the school used a small auditorium that made it difficult to invite all grade levels.

A new nurse’s office inside the building will replace an older, cramped office in a brick building that was once the cafeteria. The new office includes a private meeting room, concrete floors instead of carpet and "floor to ceiling storage," Crane ISD nurse Karen Bates said.

The building also includes a music room, and each classroom will have sinks.

The construction was paid for out of the district’s general fund, Lee said. It is called phase one, and two subsequent phases, including a new building for grades 3-5 and a library and cafeteria, have been talked about but have not been scheduled to begin.

Lee said he would like to see phase one completed before the district takes a closer look at subsequent phases, though he believes they are financially realistic.

For Bates, who attended school at Crane when her office was used to serve lunches, the reality of the building’s completion is getting closer.

"We’d go out and look at the building every day and try to visualize it," she said. "We didn’t think there was progress for a long time, but it takes time.

"It seemed like it took forever, but they’re making good progress," she said.