Roosevelt School to Fete 100 Years of Memories
By Heather Woodward, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.
Jan. 6–Roosevelt Elementary School cost $944 to build when it opened almost 100 years ago.
At the time, the Olympia School District’s fourth school had two rooms, and it lacked electricity and indoor restrooms.
Nearly a century after Roosevelt Elementary School opened, parents, students and staff plan to start celebrating the school’s 100th birthday in the spring, although Roosevelt won’t officially turn 100 until 2008.
“It’s huge,” Principal Domenico Spatola-Knoll said of the milestone. “After 100 years, you have many families with memories about the school, experiences their children have had and their children’s children.” To mark the occasion, volunteers are selling engraved bricks honoring people from all eras of the school’s history. The bricks will be installed in May in the walkways of the school’s new Centennial Time Garden, which was planned to help mark Roosevelt’s 100th anniversary.
In the months ahead, Roosevelt students will help design the garden, which will feature a 15-foot-wide sundial near the school’s front entrance.
The garden is intended to beautify what volunteer Melinda Spencer called the hub of the neighborhood.
“We wanted to create a meeting area that’s more convenient than the current muddy area that’s there and that’s inviting for the school community and larger neighborhood community,” she said.
Profits from the brick sales will benefit the Roosevelt Foundation, which offers assistance to needy families at the school. The foundation also funds Roosevelt’s after-school enrichment programs.
The brick-sale fundraiser could help the foundation provide transportation to students who stay after school for such activities, Spatola-Knoll said.
“We have children who ride the bus to and from school,” he said. “If they have no other way of getting home, they’re not going to do the program.”
Roosevelt plans another 100th anniversary celebration in the fall, Spencer said.
Fourth-graders Anna Cabiao and Kylee Norton, both 9, say they feel a connection to the school’s history because each has parents who attended Roosevelt.
“It’s kind of cool because I get to feel the same way my parents did when they went here,” said Anna, 9.
Kylee’s father and two uncles also went to Roosevelt.
“If there’s something going on at school, I can tell my dad a landmark, and he knows right away where it happened,” she said. “I think it’s pretty cool that it’s turning 100 years old. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a really, really good school.”
Heather Woodward covers education for The Olympian. She can be reached at 360-754-4225 or hwoodward@theolympian.com. How to help
Volunteers are selling engraved bricks to raise money for the Roosevelt Foundation, which helps Roosevelt families in need and pays for the school’s enrichment programs.
The bricks will be incorporated into the walkways of the school’s new Centennial Time Garden this spring.
Brick prices range from $35 to $75, depending on the size.
To order a brick go to, www.bricksrus.com/order/
rooseveltelementary.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.
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