FARMINGTON – The $7.5 million splurge to renovate and expand a Farmington middle school was money well spent, say those who checked out the open house and dedication Sunday afternoon.

“It’s awesome,” said taxpayer Sandra Zapata of Farmington as she eagerly poked her head into each freshly painted classroom. “I love this, I just love it. This is so cool. It’s about time they did this; the kids really deserve it. They’ve got it made in here.”

Tough competition, including Week 4 of the National Football League and the last day of the regular season for Major League Baseball, kept many people at home.

About 50 people, a majority of them district administrators, school board members and teachers, trudged through the autumn showers to see the results of a two-year overhaul of the Mount Blue Middle School.

The venture was long overdue at the school, which has an enrollment of just under 500 seventh- and eighth-graders each year, say those who worked and attended classes there. Mold and mildew had built up over the decades and the aging ventilation system was not doing its job.

Half of the money budgeted for the renovation went to replacing that ventilation system, and installing new windows that actually open and allow fresh air to circulate.

The remainder was spent to build a new addition, and give a face-lift to the current space.

$1 million for the project came from the state in the form of a revolving renovation fund; the other $6.5 million was shelled out by local taxpayers.

Zapata, who walked through the same halls as a student when the building was a high school, said she could barely recognize the place. The most noticeable difference, said the 1965 graduate, were brighter colors, more sunlight and more space.

“It was expensive to fix up, but it was worth it,” she said. “I want to learn. This building makes me want to go back to school.”

26-year veteran teacher MBMS Greg Trefethen lived through the mold, survived the construction and has now found new energy, like the rest of the staff and students, in the modernized school.

“For the last five or six years before they did this,” he admitted. “You’d come in and by noontime, you’d have headaches.” Now, Trefethen says, the air is noticeably fresher.

“It’s a great facility,” he said. “Kids come back to visit and they look around and say, ‘Oh my God!’ It really impresses them.”

SAD 9 Superintendent Michael Cormier cited a quote from Winston Churchill, during his welcome speech to those who had gathered for the dedication. “We shape our buildings, and then they shape us,” he said. The area is “fortunate,” Cormier pointed out, to have the middle school shape the area’s children.

Among the most notable improvements to the school is the availability of technology, he said, explaining that each student had their own laptop and the entire building was wireless. The result is that MBMS is the most technology-savvy school in the district, Cormier said.

Today there are five science labs, instead of just two, and in a true example of how much of a community effort the expansion and renovation was, said Cormier, when the cost of for new bleachers came in over budget, three area businesses and one individual donated the $10,000 needed to buy them.

The building, said principal Gary Oswald, is one that both the students and the community can take some pride in. Kids used to be embarrassed, he said, when students from other schools would visit their school for sporting events or science fairs. “I don’t think that’s the case any more.”

Profuse with gratitude for the taxpayers who supported the project, Oswald said the past two years as the students attended classes around the construction was “difficult” and “insane.”

Now, everyone can get back to work. “This is truly a community. It’s your building,” he said.

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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