MEXICO — Hundreds of people turned out Saturday to tour the new Mountain Valley Community School at 60 Highland Terrace.

The $92 million school for pre-kindergarten to eighth grade will officially open Jan. 20.

Grades 6-8 will begin attending classes in the new school on Jan. 20, with grades pre-K through 5 beginning Jan. 26.

Contractor Landry-French organized the open house. Former school board Chairman Greg Buccina said there was a crowd of about 500 when the doors opened at 9 a.m.

Like many incoming families, Dawn and Jeff Hill of Rumford and their children, Lizzy Pike, a second-grader at Meroby Elementary School in Mexico, and Jesse Pike-Hill, a kindergartener at Meroby, toured the facility.

The new school will replace Rumford Elementary, and Meroby Elementary and Mountain Valley Middle School in Mexico, accommodating about 1,000 students from Regional School Unit 10.

Dawn, who said she went to Rumford Elementary when she was a child, said of the new school, “This is beautiful. This is really big.”

Lizzy said she was anxious to see what her classroom looks like. However, that upstairs room was not on the public tour.

Jesse noticed all the doors they were going to see and began counting them.

The size of the new school was not lost on many visitors. It wasn’t long into their visit that Dawn, carrying a map of the inside of the large school, said, “I don’t know where we are.”

Along the way, the Hill family stopped to chat with other parents, students and teachers. One of the teachers was art instructor Brent Bachelder, who wrote on Facebook, “We will need a treasure map, compass, gps and breadcrumbs to find our way around the new school.”

The Hill family looked out the windows at one point and saw a courtyard. It was then they found where they were on the map.

“This is far bigger than I thought it was,” Dawn said.

Superintendent Deb Alden said the walls are specifically colored for “wayfinding,” to help students find their way around. The four hallways in the elementary section are identified by seasons: summer, fall, winter, spring; the three middle school floors are called earth, wind and fire. There will be corresponding art work being installed in December.

The entrance visitors used for the open house will not be the same one students will use on school mornings, noted Principal Carrie Luce.

“The main entrance is farther down by the main office and where students will enter and exit during the day,” she said. “It’s for safety reasons because we want everyone coming by the main office so we always know who is in and going out of our building. That entrance wasn’t used for the tour because there’s still more work to be done there.”

Classrooms have not been set up yet and most were still closed to the public during the open house Saturday, with the official opening for students still two months off.

Visitors were able to look at two art rooms, two gymnasiums and a large fitness room lined with mirrors, among others. Another feature was the co-ed bathrooms, which have full private stalls that stretch from the floor to the ceiling.

Alden said each classroom for kindergarten through grade 3 will have a single-user bathroom located in each room. The other bathrooms in the school (including the five on each middle school floor) are single use. The bathrooms near the gym for public use during events and games are all single use with the exception of the sinks. This is similar to many newly built restaurants and venues, she said.

Alden said the athletic prep area is not designed the way former “locker rooms” were. Every shower and changing area toilet is totally enclosed for privacy and single use. Additionally, two office areas are placed for supervision.

Typically, for gym classes, students in kindergarten through grade 8 don’t change clothes, except for changing into sneakers. However if they want to change, they would go into a totally private stall. A teacher could limit how many went in at the same time to use the private areas, Alden said.

The fitness room, Luce said, will be open to the public when classes are not in session.

“The fitness room is a lovely feature of our school,” said Luce, “that will be open to the community outside of instruction time. It’s a nice way for them to be part of our school community and be healthy.

“It can also be used for the students by the PE teachers, kind of like the model that’s used at the high school right now,” she said, “that during the day the fitness room is available to high school students through their PE teachers and class, and in the hours before and after the school day, it’s open to the community and law enforcement.”

Construction started during the fall of 2023 with crews from Sargent, a subcontractor under Landry/French Construction, undertaking a $13.2 million civil earthwork project.

The site work began in December 2023, ahead of the February 2024 groundbreaking ceremony, and included moving 150,000 yards of soil, importing additional fill, and extensive site preparation.

The school also includes a new track, field, playgrounds and a parking lot near where the old middle school was demolished.

Luce noted, “After a year of having my students and staff broken up all over town, I’m really thrilled that in 26 school days I’m going to have everyone under one roof.”