North Columbia Elementary School in Appling opened its doors for students, Monday morning, to kick off its first day in its new building.
The new building is at 2890 Ray Owens Rd., a brief drive up from its former building at 2874 Ray Owens, is the latest and the last of the district’s replacement schools, after last year’s completion of the updated Westmont Elementary.
“We are used to being the smallest school in the district,” said school principal Tonya Gambrell. “We only had 400 kids. We are now at over 600, so that took some planning. We had to hire some additional great teachers, and they joined our team. We are all learning the ‘Dragon Way,’ as we say here at North Columbia.”
Most of the students who were new to North Columbia were not new to Columbia County, but enrolled from other schools in the district. Like Westmont, students were reassigned to other campuses during the two-year construction.
“This student reassignment was in two phases. This is the last of those phases, and it coincided with the opening of these schools,” explained Superintendent Steven Flynt. “Anytime we have to move students from one school to another, that can be difficult, and so we did it over time. But we also did it in conjunction with the opening of the new facilities, and so we didn’t have to utilize portables and things like that, and we maximized the schools as they opened.”
North Columbia is also serving as a pilot school for the addition of AI into the district’s K-12 NexGen Cyber curriculum, to develop and refine ways to teach children how to apply the evolving tech.
“With the new emergence of AI, one of the things we’ve done has been to designate some pilot schools, and so those schools can really learn about how we might be able to maximize that and also teach it to students for appropriate use, not only in school, but also in life,” said Flynt. “And so what they learn here is something we’ll spread to other schools over time.”
Staff, students and administrators are looking forward to acclimating to the new school, says Principal Gambrell. A major academic focus this year will be increasing the school’s status in reading and math. Starting over the next few days with getting a baseline of every child in the school to monitor progress over the course of the school year.
“We have so much history in those walls, but walking into this new building and having the most up to date technology, everything is safe and secure,” Gambrell said. “It’s just a feeling that is unmatched. We are excited. Our students are excited. They’ve never really experienced a building quite like this, and so we’re excited to be bringing our traditions in with all the new building we know that we’re going to thrive and be the best that we can be.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
