New, inviting look at Washington Elementary

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Students who entered Washington Elementary School to start the new school year were greeted with a fresh, new and inviting look, and it all started with a coat of paint — a coat of many colors.

Principal Kara Shannon said no wall was left untouched.

“It was all white, it looked very — white,” Shannon said. “This gives it a fresh, new look, more modern. It’s very homey and adds some life to it.”

Adding more life to the walls in the school’s hallways are about 60 candid, poster-sized photographs of Washington students in the classrooms learning and outside playing.

“Really this is to make the environment more invitational,” Shannon said. “Obviously having pictures of the kids throughout the hallway is really fun for them. And they have fun seeing themselves, so that’s pretty neat.”

Most of the photos of students at work and play were taken by photographer Madison Lievrouw, who worked as an intern with the school district’s communication department last school year. Shannon said the staff will periodically change the photos, remove the old and replace them with new ones.

The school also added directional signage throughout the building, then used different paint colors to identify different grade areas. Shannon explained that the walls in the second grade area are now all blue, while first grade is all green and kindergarten is all yellow.

“It’s easier for us to give directions for parents and visitors,” Shannon said. “Otherwise it’s really hard to find the right room in the building, the way it’s laid out.”

The district also painted all the different learning spaces, plus the restrooms. Shannon said that Julie Colasuonno, an instructional assistant at Washington, helped lead the project over the summer.

“Summer is a hard time to get teachers to come in, because it’s their vacation,” Colasuonno said. “I started volunteering and it just kind of took off from there.”

She said the project started the last week of June and was finished the day before the kids showed up.

“To do the painting, we basically tore the entire building apart and put it back together. We knew we were going to put the pictures on the wall, and we thought that the cream-colored brick that was there before just wasn’t going to be visually pleasing,” Colasuonno said.

“Friday was the easiest first day of school I’ve ever experienced in my eight years here,” Colasuonno said. “It just went so smoothly.”

Colasuonno was also part of the project to install new playground equipment at Washington. The new PK-K playground is on the south side of the elementary building while the grades 1-2 equipment is behind the building.

Shannon said, “It’s really super-safe — there aren’t these large structures and tall structures that they can fall off of. It’s accessible for toddlers up through 10-year-olds.”

Colasuonno said, “We knew we wanted it to be as accessible to our kids with special needs as possible. One of the big things with wheelchairs and walkers is the surface — we wanted a solid rubber surface — then we wanted equipment that was accessible and would still be fun.”

Colasuonno mentioned the new “avalanche slide,” designed for the kids to come up on one side.

“We basically have three rules — have fun, be safe, be respectful of others,” she said. “If you do those three things, everything is going to be good.”

Although the Washington projects were a lot of work over the summer, Colasuonno said she is pleased with the results — and she hopes the public will be pleased as well.

“Just come and see it. It just looks so good,” she said.