JAY — The new classroom space smells fresh and new, Crystal Ducharme said at Tuesday night’s Spruce Mountain Middle School open house.

She and scores of other parents and their children wandered the corridors, spoke with teachers and saw the new section of the school.

“I like it down here,” said Ducharme’s eighth-grade daughter. “There’s more space, but it takes longer to get here.”

Her brother, seventh-grader Hunter Quimby, also likes the new section.

“I like being separate from the rest of the school,” he said.

Art teacher Lesley Harmon is pleased that she has more space.

“I do have a window,” she said. “I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m very blessed.”

Her window looks out onto the corridor, but it’s a window.

Health and physical education teacher Brad Bishop is still moving into his airy, light green classroom. He’s thinking he needs new desks for his students, and he’s hoping the district will make changes so that basement classrooms don’t hear the noise from the upstairs gymnasium.

Superintendent Robert Wall told the board last week that steps are being taken to mitigate the noise situation.

Kyah Andrewski, a seventh-grader, likes the larger classroom. Her mom, Laura Jackson, isn’t sure yet how she feels about the nearly completed renovation project that moved some middle school classrooms to the Jay Community Building’s basement so high school students would have sufficient space at the adjacent school.

Samantha Cormier, an eighth-grader, said she’s a bit confused when trying to find the basement section of the school.

Math teacher Nicole Edmunds said the staff tries to help the students get around until they are more accustomed to the school’s new configuration.

Upstairs, many parents and their children had moved into the library to learn about the contract they must agree to so that their child can take home a laptop computer.

Tammy McGowan, mother of sixth-grader Kimberly Webster, was visiting the middle school for the first time. She had attended the former Jay Middle School that was torn down and replaced by the current facility.

“This is so exciting,” she said of the school.

Heidi Gray, mother of sixth-grader Riley Gray, was equally impressed with the school.

“I love it. Riley gets to go from room to room, so she has more responsibility, and the teachers are really nice,” Gray said.