Forty-five miles away, Snyder Independent School District has constructed a state-of-the-art elementary campus that has most of the features local officials want to place in a campus here.

A new elementary school is the centerpiece of the $34 million bond issue that will be decided by BSISD voters May 10.

Snyder’s elementary opened last August and school officials are quite proud of the results.

Constructed for $19 million, the 140,000 square-foot campus houses 1,200 students in grades kindergarten through 5.

It replaced five aging elementary schools constructed in the 1950s and ‘60s, SISD Superintendent Dr. Ronnie Collins said.

“We just couldn’t afford to keep five old elementary schools open anymore,” Collins said.

In a campaign similar to Big Spring, SISD officials studied their facility situation for a couple of years before devising a plan for the new elementary campus.

Then, using a citizen’s advisory committee to spearhead the campaign, school trustees put the bond issue before Snyder voters in December 2004.

The bond passed by an overwhelming 71 percent.

“We had a lot of people working for the bond,” Collins said. “The citizen’s committee in particular worked very hard ... There was some opposition, but it wasn’t very organized.”

Planning and construction of the new campus took about 2 1/2 years before it opened at the start of the current school year.

The results have been overwhelmingly positive, Collins said.

“Under the old setup, we had a different grade at every campus. If you had three kids in elementary school, you had to go to three places to pick them up at the end of the day,” he said. “And curriculum was a nightmare. We had teachers in first grade who never met each other.”

The new campus brings all elementary students and teachers under one roof, but still employs a “two schools in one” approach to provide a more congenial instruction environment.

“We have grades K through 2 on one side and grades 3 through 5 on the other, with shared facilities in the middle,” Collins said. “You can have a child in first grade and another one in fifth grade, and they’ll never see each other during the day.”

Security is addressed by having all visitors funneled through the main office at the front of the building after the start of the school day. Each person is required to produce a driver’s license, which is then scanned by computer to provide a background check on the individual before he or she is allowed inside the building. Surveillance cameras also keep track of activities in every area, Collins said.

The inside of the building is spacious, to say the least. While many Big Spring elementary campuses are plagued by a lack of classroom and office space, Snyder’s building has it to spare, featuring separate instructional spaces for classes, music and art education, as well as office space for a nurse, diagnosticians and teacher conference spaces.

The building has another feature Big Spring elementary campuses lack — a gymnasium large enough to hold four physical education classes simultaneously.

What Snyder officials are most proud of, however, is the building’s use of technology.

“That’s the biggest difference here,” Collins said. “The new school is just oozing with technology.”

The building boasts three computer labs — with a total of about 170 work stations — and each classroom features “smart” blackboards (which allows interactive computer-based instruction) and an audio system which allows teachers to be clearly heard by every student.

Technology even extends to the lighting system, which is gauged by a computer monitor to automatically dim lights in a particular section if it is vacant for any length of time.

Perhaps the person best suited to compare the Snyder campus to its Big Spring counterparts is Karen Saunders, who was principal at Kentwood Elementary before assuming the same post at Snyder this year.

“There’s no comparison,” Saunders said flatly.

About the only thing the school lacks, Saunders added, is any major problems.

“At first, (the size) was kind of scary, but right now, I don’t feel like we have any more or any less issues than other schools,” she said. “After we started the school year, it became a realization that it was no longer a monster school; it was our school.”

About the only problem was in transportation, which Saunders admitted was originally a headache. Since the start of the school year, however, officials have streamlined the picking up of students to the point that the entire process takes less than 15 minutes, she said.

Contact Staff Writer Steve Reagan at 263-7331, ext. 234 or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it