To hear Sandusky Middle School students tell it, their favorite part of their new school building is their lockers.
“They are tall, and I can fit in them,” seventh-grader Quiaari Rosser said, sitting in the cafeteria on her first day of school. “The other ones were small and messed up.”
Across the cafeteria from Rosser, sixth-grader Turner Lee also said he’s most excited about his locker.
“I can fit all my stuff in there,” he said, explaining that he’d had to share a locker at Heritage Elementary. “It looks nice too.”
The first students filed through the blue doors of the new Sandusky Middle School — the city’s first new school since Heritage High School opened in 1976 — for their first day of school in the building Monday. Most seemed to be taking the scenery in quiet stride as they attempted to navigate their new schedules.
Sonny Witt, assistant superintendent for operations and administration, has served as a shepherd for the project. On Monday, he watched students flow into the school from a vantage point inside the cafeteria. Walking window to window, he stopped to tweak a window closure lever or two, making all the metal handles point the same direction.
“Oh, they’ve got the flagpole up, great,” Witt said in a soft voice, gazing over the grounds. “I was worried about that.”
Near the pole, a backhoe scooped up a load of dirt, preparing Sandusky’s yet-to-be completed parking lot.
Witt said that parent confusion about where to drop off students had been a wrinkle, but he hopes new school resource officer Eric Taylor can help sort things out beginning Tuesday. Parents should drop off their students by the elementary school, rather than in the new middle school bus loop, which is located where the old school used to be.
As is his daily tradition, Principal Jay Sales visited every classroom in the school Monday morning, checking in with teachers and welcoming the students.
He told one class they had close to 30 million reasons to be happy, referring to the roughly $26 million spent on the new building project.
Sales likes to call himself Sandusky’s “proud, proud principal.”
“It’s a great day to be alive in Lynchburg,” Sales said, quoting former Mayor Jimmie Bryan, “but especially at Sandusky Middle School.”
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