MARYSVILLE — For the second time in her career, Jeanne Tennis is a principal without students.
As the leader of Grove Elementary School, which opens this fall in central Marysville, she is busy hiring a staff and studying a curriculum for when the first students arrive.
“It’s like a blank slate,” Tennis said. “You can dream the dream of if we could do this all over again, what would we want it to look like.”
Tennis did the same thing more than 10 years ago when Quil Ceda Elementary School opened.
“It’s easier this time,” she said from the construction site. “You know what to expect.”
The $20 million project is about 60 percent complete and on schedule. It will be the district’s only two-story campus and is expected to start with 400 students and grow into a campus of 550. Grove Elementary is part of a $118 million bond measure voters approved in 2006.
The bond package also includes a second large comprehensive high school. Marysville-Getchell High School is slated to open in 2010.
For now, much of Tennis’s work is behind the scenes, but it will be more noticeable soon.
For instance, parents eager to learn more about developments at Grove Elementary School can expect an Internet link some time in March on the district’s Web site, www.msvl.k12.wa.us.
March also will be the time for a first meeting of parents interested in forming a PTA, but no date has been set.
The school hopes to recruit parent volunteers to walk to school with groups of students, most of whom will live within a mile of the campus.
The school’s mascot will have to wait until the students arrive to decide for themselves.
Students already have their grassy play area in place from the land’s previous uses as city fields and a privately-owned driving range before that. The Marysville Rotary Club will help provide playground equipment.
Tennis has hired about one-third of Grove’s staff so far, including teachers who worked with her at Quil Ceda. A planning team of teachers from each grade level will soon be developing a school vision and writing procedures for how the school is run day to day.
A year without students has been a little lonely, Tennis acknowledged.
“Valentine’s Day was hard,” she said. “The children always take so much care choosing the right one for their principal.”
Grove Elementary School
Address: 6510 Grove St., Marysville
Cost: $20 million
Acres: 10
Square footage: 53,170
Classrooms: 25
Percent complete: 60
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