PARIS – Hundreds of elementary pupils from all across town will attend their first day of classes at the new Paris Elementary School on High Street today.

Many teachers sacrificed their vacation last week to make sure everything is just right at the $12 million brick and glass building that holds 450 students.

Several teachers said they will spend the first part of the day doing a morning meeting. The pupils will have to learn how to use their lockers, the rules of using the bathrooms and the classrooms, and cafeteria regulations.

“We basically have to start over again,” said second-grade teacher Heather Hatch.

At 10 a.m., the entire school will come outside for the inaugural flag raising and pictures, and then go back to their classrooms.

Hatch had managed to make her second-grade classroom look lived in, but Friday she scurried about doing “the fiddly bits,” rearranging stuff and putting items away.

A longtime teacher at the former Mildred M. Fox School in Paris, she has consistently described the move as bittersweet.

In her new room, she has tables where students sit in groups. The room also has centers for reading, listening and computers.

“We’re trying to fall into old routines, and trying to pull consistency over,” she said.

Elementary technician Richard McIntosh and fourth-grade teacher Sharon Castonguay worked unpacking computers in one of the two computer labs. There will be 90 iMac computers in the labs, library and classrooms. There are also 50 laptops, 30 of them for teachers and 20 for students.

Inside a learning lab, special education teacher Jeanne Feder gushed about how the larger school’s resources would bring more resources to students.

For example, in the lab’s kitchen, students can learn fractions and other math skills through cooking.

“Doubling the staff doubles the opportunities,” she said.

Inside a first-grade room, Theresa Copp stapled a border on her “word wall,” a spelling tool for students learning to write.

Copp also has a long history with the Fox school.

“It’s new, lighter, and not as much furniture,” she said.

Kindergarten teacher Marcye Wright was also setting up her room Friday, putting name tags at each of the students’ seats.

She said she had been in the same kindergarten room at Fox for 18 years, so moving was a challenge because of the sheer amount of materials accumulated.

The furniture in the rooms is all new, and in her room is especially tailored to kindergarten students.

“Everything is kindergarten-size,” she said.

Today’s opening marks the first time all kindergarten through sixth-grade pupils from Paris are educated together under the same roof since SAD 17 was formed more than 40 years ago.

Paris pupils said goodbye to Madison Avenue School in Oxford and the Fox school before they left for vacation.