NORWAY – Students and staff at the Rowe Elementary School will be able to breath fresh air when they return to school this week.

Some 58 new windows have been installed in the old section of the brick school that sits on the knoll at Main and Paris streets.

“It’s magnificent,” Principal George Sincerbeaux said Friday as he showed off the huge windows that replace those as old as 70 years.

The old windows not only failed to open properly, if at all, but lacked screens.

With a teacher allergic to bees, that meant some had to be kept shut. Others windows only opened only a few inches.

The staff is ecstatic about the new windows, said Sincerbeaux, who once worked installing windows professionally. He said he knows a good window when he sees one.

Returning staff and students at the school will also be met with a new technology lab, new benches in the lobby for parents who wait for their children, a fresh coat of paint throughout the building and a full-time kindergarten class that Sincerbeaux said was a long time coming and will be crucial to the success of the young students as they enter first and second grade.

Parents and students will get a first look at the rejuvenated building today when an open house is held from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

School opens districtwide for students in grades kindergarten through six and grades seven and nine on Wednesday. Students in grades eight, 10, 11 and 12 will return Thursday.