Farewell to a school building full of memories

This week we say goodbye to the building that housed generations of students at North Ridge Elementary School in North Raleigh. Due for demolition, the 1960s, one-story, brick building saw my three children learn to read, make lasting friendships, and provided glimpses of who they will become.

I spent years along its concrete pathways, wringing my hands over missing homework, PTA fundraisers, and how to get heavy coats and weekend food to the kids who did not have the resources that my own do. It was a time in my life of joy, frustration, and deep, life-long friendships.

We fought for a new sign out front, playground equipment, and raised thousands of dollars for smart boards, when new schools were having them installed on the county dime. We celebrated the open campus, loving that our kids got to enjoy fresh air every time the classroom door opened, rather than being cooped up in a building. In the ‘60s, campus security wasn’t much of a concern.

I also remember watching teachers and Principal Robert Soutter increasingly do more with less as kids with few English skills, and even fewer resources, filled the classrooms and leaned on the school as a lifeline. While the school tackled those with the most needs first, some families looked toward charters and other schools.

Many of the parents spent dozens of hours each week trying to fill in the daily gaps, but also bring the plight of the degrading building to the attention of Wake County Public Schools. A bright, shiny new building with modern technology, windows made of actual glass (the front office windows were still plastic, left over from Hurricane Fran damage), and unique classes would keep and attract families.

In 2010, as PTA president, I joined Mr. Soutter to walk planning officials and a member of the county school board around the campus. We wanted North Ridge to be prioritized in the 2011 school construction plan. It wasn’t. Instead, Greene Elementary in North Hills was rebuilt, and Abbott’s Creek Elementary School went up across the street from Durant Road Elementary. A new generation of North Ridge Elementary PTA parents took up the baton.

Now, changes over the past few years have expanded its offerings and activities, drawing families to North Ridge Elementary’s warm, neighborhood campus. The new building, filled with energetic and engaged students, will be a fruit of much labor for staff and parents.

North Ridge Elementary joins Wiley Elementary and others for long-awaited construction as part of the county’s Continuous Building Plan, funded by the 2013 school construction bond. In Wake County student enrollment has grown by more than 40 percent since 2004, making it one of the fastest growing urban districts in the nation, but also leading to constantly shifting priorities on where schools are to be built and which ones are renovated.

Today, my own children and those of my friends have aged out of North Ridge Elementary, but the same principal and many of the same teachers boxed up their classrooms last week to move into a modular campus while the new 800-student capacity building is built on Harps Mill Road over the next 14 months.

It’s a long-awaited and well-deserved victory. My children raced home from camp last Friday to meet their friends in front of the old building, planning to “acquire” an old brick for friends to sign. Years from now, they will pack away that brick and remember the strong building blocks of their life that started in that old building with the plastic windows.

This story was originally published June 22, 2018 at 10:37 AM with the headline "Farewell to a school building full of memories."