JUly 29, 2011 VOl. 3 ISSUE 35 - SEMO TIMES

New Kindergarten Center
Commended in Poplar Bluff
Liz Ellis
Reporter
The Poplar Bluff R-I School District is having a
ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours of their new $6
million Kindergarten Center today. The new building
is located on the edge of town behind Cripple
Creek Plaza on Hwy PP.
“I think it’s great,” Pam Dunivan, a kindergarten
teacher at the new school said. “It’s so bright and
airy, the kids are going to absolutely love it. It’s so
much different from what we had. It’s like going
from poverty to ‘Wow!’”
The Kindergarten Center has been in the works for
several years, and was proposed four times before
the bond to build the new building finally passed. It
has been under construction for about a year.
“It’s been a big need for us to have more room,”
Debbie Harper, intervention specialist at the school
said. “It was just too small. Where we were before,
it’s going to be fine for a much smaller school.”
The old kindergarten center, the Mark Twain
building, will be used for the early childhood programs
at Poplar Bluff. They will be moving into the
new addition to the building.
“Right now, we don’t have anything in [the old
portion of the building],” Rod Priest, assistant principal
of finance said. “Cause, in order to utilize that,
we’d probably need to look to totally renovating it.”
The new building however, is state of the art. It
features a full sized gym with hardwood floors,
a large cafeteria, a full-service library center with
a smart board and a tiered area for reading time, a
state-of-the-art nurse’s office complete with a small
Photo by Liz Ellis
The new Kindergarten Center will open on Aug. 24 for classes. It has
been under construction for a year, and was proposed four years ago.
shower in the bathroom, and 24 classrooms, all of
which have smart boards and a computer as well as
individual restrooms.
“In the old building, we spent precious instructional
time lining kids up to go to the bathroom,” said
Kindergarten Principal Tammy Crouse. “The girls’
bathroom was on one side and boys’ was on the other.
So you would have to have two classrooms go to
the bathroom at the same time so two teachers could
monitor. We had to schedule bathroom breaks.”
The new building also features some additional
security measures, like a state-of-the-art sprinkler
system and security locks on the doors in the lobby,
so office personnel can buzz people through the lobby
doors during the day.
After hours, the Kindergarten Center will be used
for basketball practice for high school students, and
the full-size stage in the gym may also be available
to the other schools or the community.
“At the high school, we’ve got one basketball
court,” Priest said. “If you’ve got girls and boys,
sometimes they have to wait or practice early or
practice late. This gives us one more spot to give
them so they can get their practices in and get home
at a decent hour.”
Crouse says she thinks the biggest improvement
will be having everyone under one roof.
“When we had three buildings, we had three different
sections,” Crouse said. “Now we will be more
together, plus the children are more together.” She
also added that the old building layout was complicated
and the traffic on Main Street was dangerous.
The benefits of the new building seem to be endless,
with a full-size playground and room for the
building to grow as it needs to. All of the teachers
and workers at the new building
have perpetual smiles on their
faces at the new prospects.
“I am just looking forward to a
very great year,” Cindy DeWitt,
a kindergarten teacher said. “All
the teachers are excited and maybe
a little overwhelmed from all
the unpacking and boxes.”
“I think its state of the art,”
Crouse said. “I’m excited and
anxious to start the school year.
It’s just wonderful.”
Liz Ellis can be reached by
email at lizellis@semotimes.com.
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