Springdale closes last chapter of Lee Elementary

SPRINGDALE -- Many of the students and staff at Lee Elementary School greeted the last day of school Thursday with less than the usual excitement.

The School District decided to close the 70-year-old school on Quandt Avenue.

"It's a bittersweet day," said Principal Justin Swope. "We've just tried to keep it low-key. We're telling students we are closing this chapter of the school by celebrating all the kids of Lee.

"In spite of 70 years, it's a great building and well taken care of. It's beautiful inside and out," he said.

The Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation retired the school, said Kelly Hayes, deputy superintendent and finance administrator. The state will no longer give the district money to upgrade the Lee building because of its age, he said.

The lot of land where the school sits is too small by state standards to expand or build a new building, he added.

Hayes said the district will repurpose the building as a prekindergarten center. The state facilities division has oversight only of kindergarten through 12th grade facilities, he said.

"I don't want to give the impression that the building is not safe," Hayes said. "At this point, we need to improve it, but we would get no money to help us from the state."

A few blocks away at the district's Washington building, packed cardboard boxes sat on the reception desk Thursday. Three large frames bearing black-and-white photographs taken in the 1950s of the former school and its students grace the walls.

The school opened in 1923 as Washington Elementary School and served students until 1982, according to a 2021 school district documentary.

The building on Emma Street has housed district offices including English as a second language, nursing and food service. Chris Stecklein, director of the district's Education Foundation, said in the documentary $9 million in scholarships were awarded to Springdale students from his office in the building.

The building holds a similar status as Lee with the state facilities division, Hayes said. Staff members in Washington are moving to other buildings in the district.

The district sold Washington to Kasim Ventures, Hayes said. Omar Kasim owns the Con Quesos restaurant in Fayetteville.

Sitting on a bench shaded by maple trees, Swope said he liked the small-town feel of Lee, with just 500 students. The newest school in the district, the Rollins School of Innovation, will open in the fall with space for 800 students.

"You still get the feel of a small community in the school even though it's in the largest school district of the state," he said.

Nancy Hagan was the youngest of four Charlesworth children to attend Lee in the 1970s. She remembers riding her bike to school or her dad driving her in the rain. She remembers the discipline Principal Oakley Long meted to a boy who brought a water gun to school before the principal crushed it with his foot.

"He meant business," Hagan said of Long. "I discovered at an early age that I wanted to be a good person."

Long was the first principal of Lee and stayed for 20-plus years, Swope said.

Hagan said she wants children in the neighborhood to walk to school and be part of the small community.

Swope and some of the students will transfer to George Elementary School next year, which is 2 miles away. Other students will go to Jones and Knapp elementaries.

Jerri McWaters has taught music at Lee for 31 years.

"I'll miss my Lee family," McWaters said while trying to hold back tears. "I'll miss the kids. I get to see them every year."

As a music teacher, McWaters taught every kid in the school throughout their elementary careers, she said. She taught parents and children in some families.

She also enjoyed getting to watch students grow. She's especially proud of Kevin Flores, a member of the City Council, and Jenee Fleenor, the Country Music Association's Musician of the Year in 2019 and 2020.

McWaters said she has been cleaning out her classroom for a couple of months.

"I'll find something sentimental, and it's hard to let go of. But it's time to move on, right," she asked without conviction.

Swope -- who has headed the school for 10 years -- said he found in the school safe a time capsule left by students and teachers 20 years ago. He opened it Thursday morning during the school's last assembly. All assemblies were held via Zoom this year, he noted.

The capsule included writings by students about the school.

A lot of the students wrote about how they liked reading, Swope said. So he told his students, "See, reading was important in this school 20 years ago, just like it is today. And I bet it was important 70 years ago when the school first opened."

Swope said he already packed a harmonica his dad kept from his time as a student at Lee in the 1950s. Principal Long taught a group of kids how to play.

Lee opened at the start of the 1951 school year, with eight classrooms, eight teachers and 264 students. It cost $124,503 to build.

The building had four additions during its 70-year history: four classrooms in 1961, two in 1963, 12 rooms and a kitchen in 1971 and a new library media center in 2004.