Atwater elementary school adds seventh graders after $4.36 million expansion

Last year’s sixth graders at Peggy Heller Elementary came back to school Wednesday to a familiar scene.

They are part of the first seventh grade class to walk onto the Peggy Heller campus in years after the Atwater Elementary School District completed expansion of the school to alleviate overcrowding at Mitchell Senior School.

About 85 seventh graders are schooling at Peggy Heller this year instead of Mitchell Senior, AESD Superintendent Sandra Schiber said. Enrollment at Peggy Heller is expected to grow by another 100 students for the 2019-2020 school year as the current seventh grade class advances to eighth grade.

“This is in response to growth that we are facing as a district, but specifically at the middle school level,” Schiber said.

The school district has added more than 170 students in the last three years, according to Linda Levesque, assistant superintendent of business services.

The district recently completed a seven-month process that included purchasing two modular classroom wings, a total of six classrooms, that include a science lab, storage, restrooms and office, Levesque said.

A lease-leaseback deal with J.L. Bray, Inc. improved the school campus with landscaping, play fields and a new kindergarten playground with a covered shelter., Levesque said. The site improvements and buildings cost $4.36 million, plus $463,000 in other costs, including architect and inspector fees.

The project also helps Atwater residents, Schiber said, by providing sports fields and a new gym for public use.

Peggy Heller School once housed seventh and eighth graders, Schiber said. But a combination of the recession and declining enrollment led the district to cut those grade levels.

“It’s nice to return that school to the way it was when it opened,” Schiber said.