LEWISTON — What’s old is new again at Montello Elementary School in Lewiston.

Over the summer, staff volunteers have been planting and maintaining gardens around the building. Sensory paths and movement activities on the walkways and playgrounds support social-emotional learning and give kids more ways to move and regulate throughout the day.

As the summer winds down, there are several other ongoing and planned projects, including an art piece at the front of the school depicting their mascot, Monty the Eagle. Later this month, parent volunteers will be coming in to add some new life to the teachers’ lounge and other adult spaces in the building.

Assistant Principal Deanna Ehrhardt, a former art teacher, is working with teachers and students to give new life to a giant ceramic mural created in 1993-94 by students under the direction of art teacher Elaine Toutain and that was beginning to fall apart and fade.

Ehrhardt reached out to Toutain and convinced her to come in later this week to meet the painting crew and talk to them about the project.

“This is such an engineering masterpiece … I understand the labor-intensive work that went into something of this magnitude. And this was before any art rooms — (Toutain) worked out of a rolling cart, having to go back and forth to the kiln at the other end of the school,” Ehrhardt said.

The school at 407 East Ave. has been through several additions and upgrades since it was built in 1961. These new improvements make the school shine, officials said.

“It’s been a genuine community effort with community members supporting a larger vision for beautifying our campus, and will bring a lot of pride to our school in the fall,” Principal Tiffany Sax said. “I think this says a lot about what our staff and families are willing to do to make a positive impact.”