DANVERS -- Roughly 400 students from Covell, Stanford and Danvers will start their classes today in a new, state-of-the-art school building.

Olympia North Elementary School gave parents and children a preview Sunday of the new facility, which cost $9.5 million. The school will house students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.

"It's been a real community effort," said Brad Hutchison, superintendent of the Olympia school district.

Students were enthusiastic about their new school.

Fifth-grader Austin Wise, a member of the student council, said he is excited about the upcoming fall festival, just part of the student council's plans for the new building. The festival will be easier to organize because the new building is "farther away from the road," he said.

"I really like that it's run on solar (energy)," fifth-grader Sierra Priebe said of the geothermal heating and cooling system.

The building has three "pods" where classes from different grade levels can assemble and work together. The pods, which were equipped with wireless technology and low sinks, will host art classes and science lessons, among other things. Fourth- and fifth-graders will have lockers in the pod where those classes can congregate for learning sessions.

The classrooms themselves boasted skylights and interactive, computerized white boards built into the walls. Each board comes with a magnetic pad, which functions as a mouse. The various keys on the pad can be separated and attached to any surface in the room. Teachers will also use styluses to operate the boards. Some classrooms have free-standing chalkboards, but no chalkboards were built into the walls.

"These classrooms are incredible," said Fred Shear, the school's principal.

"I think that from an educational standpoint it's so user-friendly," he said. "The learning environment is what I'm most excited about."

In a room specially designed for students with several disabilities to use, a mat table can assist with physical therapy and a trampoline can help develop gross motor skills. The room also will function as the school's storm shelter, where shades will allow students, faculty and staff to weather a storm without having to crouch down.

The new building's learning center includes a padded reading terrace where classes can sit while a teacher instructs them or reads to them. A toy reading tree also provides a place for children to sit and pass the time reading.

The learning center also provides a central location for 30 computers with flat screen monitors, which were brought from the former elementary school building. The computers were previously located on the third floor of the older building and "inconvenient to get to," Hutchison said.

No stairs

The new building lacks the stairs of the former school, making it more user friendly to students who use wheelchairs or walkers. The flatter layout of the building also will make the school days more efficient, said Gail Hauptman, who instructs students with learning disabilities in third, fourth and fifth grade.

Hauptman said in the former building different classes had to climb stairs to work together, and "time was certainly lost." The pods will allow for "more of an interaction of different classes," she said.

The school was built on the same site as the last building, which was built in 1914 and razed in June while construction of the new building was being completed. The new building retains the older building's gymnasium and bleachers, built in 1983.