Michael McNelly was overcome with emotion when he set foot in the modernized Tracey?s Elementary School.
“You don?t know how I looked when I walked into the gym and how I almost started to cry when I heard the Pledge of Allegiance,” said McNelly, a former Anne Arundel school board president and board member from 1995 to 2005.
McNelly spent years fighting for a renovated school in Tracey?s Landing and was part of the opening ceremonies Monday. His daughter, now a junior at McDaniel College, attended the school, and he remembered visiting the cramped, old building that needed portable classrooms.
“When they had functions, like Christmas parties, all the family members like the aunts and uncles couldn?t fit and had to stand out in the hallway,” he said.
Now the school has a spacious gym with a climbing wall, science lab, video-linked security system, four computers in every classroom, 29 instructional areas, a large media center and computer lab.
Students also changed the school mascot from a termite to a tiger. The building was constructed in 1962.
The 255 students in kindergarten through fifth grade and 45 staff and faculty members were excited as officials described the new amenities of the 56,640-square-foot school.
“I like the gym. It?s huge,” said fifth-grader Taylor Fry, 10.
Fifth-grader Nathan Huber, 11, who was excited to now have a science lab, said, “We?re going to grow Bay grasses in the science lab and then go out and plant them.”
The projectcost $16.4 million, said Mark Snyder, superintendent at J. Vinton Schafer & Sons Inc., the construction management company based in Abingdon.
“We feel like a whole new community with so much energy and so much excitement,” said Principal Theresa Zablonski.
Students? official first day was Jan. 4.
