STRATTON – Built in 1989, the Stratton Elementary School was designed to hold 90 students comfortably and 120 students maximum, Principal Lorrie Arruda said.

“When I came on in 1995, there were 150 students here,” she added. “While we’ve reduced in population (since then), we’ve grown in programming with foreign language, computers, laptops, and music,” which includes general music, instrumental and steel drum band. All-day kindergarten was also added.

The school made it work with portable classrooms. Language arts teacher Pearl Butler was in a portable for 13 years, but Wednesday she conducted her first class in her room in the school’s new wing that was added over the summer.

“I feel like I’ve been voted back on the island,” Butler said. “I won’t feel the wind in my hair when I go make copies.”

“It’s a wonderful space,” Butler said. She said she was confident that the school renovation and expansion would happen eventually. “But I wondered if it would happen while I was still teaching.”

“It’s been difficult on the kids, too, all the running back and forth from the school to the portable outside,” she added. “It was a lot of unnecessary travel for them.”

Seventh-graders Briana Knox and Mercedes Freeman were excited to see the new wing.

“I like how we’re all under one roof,” Freeman said.

“We don’t have to walk a long way just to go to the bathroom or for lunchtime,” Knox added.

“I thought it was really cool,” Freeman said of seeing the renovations for the first time. “It’s all brand new, and everything is in its proper place and organized.”

Arruda said many of the students were excited to see the lockers.

“They’re awesome,” Freeman agreed. “Last year we had boxes we had to stuff our stuff into.”

The wing houses classrooms for fourth through eighth grade, two special education rooms, a teacher’s room and a reading recovery room. The former reading recovery room is now an entranceway. The rest of the school underwent major renovations. The office, secretary’s space and principal’s office were all redone. Walls that were once portable were moved and made permanent, and the library and kitchen area were expanded. Existing rooms were redone to house a new guidance and occupational therapy room and music room. The old science room is now the art room, which includes a new kiln.

“The school has doubled in size outside of the gym,” Arruda said. “The computer room is the only room we didn’t touch.”

Outside, the portables are gone, and part of the lawn is being reseeded so that the school can once again have a T-ball field.

In all, the improvements and addition have cost $1.2 million and were paid with tuition money.

“We never got on the list for the state. They didn’t see a need,” Arruda said.

Stratton Elementary got to use the money because “it became our turn,” she added. “All the other schools in the district had gotten their renovations and additions.”

She said many did not think the work would be done in time for the first day of school, especially during the last two weeks.

“They would come in and shake their heads,” Arruda said. “There was furniture in the halls, the floors weren’t done, wires were hanging from the ceiling and lumber everywhere. It was a mess.”

For a week-and-a-half, 10 to 13 custodians spent each day at the school cleaning up, putting up shelves and assembling furniture.

The next project is a new playground that cost between $55,000 and $60,000 and will be installed Sept. 16.

“We need volunteers, whether they can pour lemonade or pound a nail,” Arruda said.

The school will have an open house later this fall to celebrate both the school renovation and the playground.