PARIS – Two hundred little mouths sang goodbye to the school that’s served the town for 124 years Friday.

“Fox School, Fox School, you did move on, to bigger and better place, more glorious to view,” they sang. “But the memories stay on, of the love we’ve had for you.”

It was the last day of classes at the East Main Street brick building.

After a one-week vacation, the students will start Feb. 26 at Paris Elementary, a new, state-of the-art building on High Street.

The kindergarten through third grade students will be joined there by the fourth- to sixth-grade students from Madison Avenue Elementary School in Oxford. It will mark the first time all the K-6 Paris students are under one roof.

The Fox School’s gym is in a portable unit next to the building. Students sat on the tiled floor and sang songs led by music teacher Danny Walker on the piano. Walker has taught there for 10 years.

At one point he said to someone videotaping to zoom in on the broken piano pedal.

“That’s how much my foot has been on it,” Walker said.

Likely, Friday was the last time students would sing the Fox School song. Walker said there will likely be a new song for Paris Elementary.

The song was written by former kindergarten teacher Jane Bamberg. She was later asked to add another verse for the school’s closing.

After singing the Fox School song, students filed out to the flagpole to see the flag lowered for the last time. Several current and former staff members with long histories at the school did the honors.

New digs

Then, students were bused over to Paris Elementary on Friday morning, where many of them were catching their first glimpse of the building.

“The gym is huge, we had to be in a small portable,” one student said.

“I like our new room,” another girl added.

“I like the TV in the room,” yet another one quipped.

They pointed elatedly at the office’s sliding windows. They marveled at the gym floor. They scurried about the cafeteria. They gawked at their new lockers.

“Pink wall!” one girl exclaimed inside second-grade teacher Anna Wylie’s classroom.

“A pink wall?” a boy responded.

At Fox School, the students didn’t have lockers, only hooks on the walls. They didn’t have a cafeteria, they ate in the classrooms. The gym was a fourth of the size of the new one.

Principal Jane Fahey had a quick assembly Friday when the students came. She led them in a cheer and told them the history of the cardinal emblem, the mascot of the former Paris High School. Then they went to their new classrooms, where teachers helped get them settled and later took them on tours of the building.

“The big kids will be here, too,” Fahey explained.

In her classroom, Wylie showed the students where each station would be and then gathered them in the central meeting place.

Across the hall, second grade teacher Heather Hatch told students what to do with their bagged lunches.

In another room, first grade teacher Martha MacFarland showed students the bathroom attached to the room, and reminded them to wash their hands.

Students ate lunch in the cafeteria.

“Can we eat with different grades?” one student asked.

Teachers were nearly as excited as the students, who seemed to have a hard time staying in line as they toured.

“It even smells new!” one student exclaimed.

Memories

Prior to the sing-along, several people spoke about their memories of the school.

“Do you know how hard it is has been for someone who has been in the same place for 20 years to get up and move?” Superintendent Mark Eastman asked.

Education technician Jill Gay sat with her parents, who remember bringing her to school there on her first day.

Hebron resident Julie Deans talked about Theresa Copp, who was her first-grade teacher. She later came back while in school and did her practicum with Copp.

Fahey hopes to keep the history of Fox alive at the new school, along with old one-room schoolhouses in the town. A grant has given the school funds to do a history project and ultimately name the wings of Paris Elementary after them.

SAD 17 officials are still deciding what to do with Fox. A popular idea is to convert it into new central offices for the district. Madison Avenue is a leased building, and the lease is up this summer.

Students and staff said goodbye by lowering the flag. The students sang “God Bless America,” and then a refrain of the Fox School Song.

“Since 1883, a flag has been raised over Fox School,” Fahey told them. “We are lowering it for the last time.”

Holding the folded flag, she said, “We’ll make sure this is the first flag to fly over Paris Elementary.”