A long-awaited welcome

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT COAST -- Students spilled off of the buses carrying boxes and

bags, grins splitting their little faces.

“We made it,” declared Danielle Abel, 9, as she hopped off the last

step.

Newport Coast Elementary School students packed up their desks at

Lincoln Elementary School on Friday morning and said “goodbye” to their

hosts and hostesses of nearly six months.

Without a qualm, they went to a campus still without grass or a

playground, and classrooms with bare walls.

“I’m so happy,” said Camille Kazempoor, a fourth-grade student. “We’ve

been held up at Lincoln so long.”

The nearly finished campus, on the corner of Newport Coast Drive and

Ridge Park Road, for the first time knew the laughter of the 309 students

who will officially begin classes there Feb. 26.

Friday was a dry run for students, teachers and staff who have been

waiting to move into the new elementary school since September.

Like moving into a new home, the day was thrilling for everyone and

emotional for the adults.

“I’m going to cry,” said Monique Van Zeebroeck, the principal. “It was

so cool to see them get off the buses.”

In classrooms still stacked with boxes and crates, students made

themselves at home at their new desks.

“Remember the date and time,” Mike Brewer advised his class of excited

first-graders, whose first questions were regarding the location of the

playground.

Using a small, square blue and orange beanbag to keep order of who was

asking questions, Brewer gave students time to make all the comments they

were nearly bursting with.

“What board are you going to write on?” Courtney Smith asked.

“Is there going to be an indoor slide?” Karissa Reinach asked. “Or

monkey bars?”

“The TV, when you put it in, will be perfect for me to see,” Hanna

Abel said.

“Is there going to be swings?” Emily Tomei asked.

Brewer also apprised them of some new features, such as automatic

bathroom fixtures, and set a few new rules.

“From now on, you’re going to sit inside for lunch at long tables and

you have to eat everything before you’ll be able to go outside and play,”

he told his young charges.

“Do we have to eat our sweets?” Sara Martin asked.

“What if we have onion chips and we don’t like them?” Connor Lazar

asked.

After question time, the class toured the campus and gathered with the

rest of the school in the bright new multipurpose room, where they ate

lunch and watched a slide show, which featured photos of nearly every

student.

When the students climbed onto the buses to go home, they were,

officially, Newport Coast Elementary School students.