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Historic school closes in Stokes County
Journal photo by David Rolfe
Teachers both past and present lined up to wave goodbye to students as they left Nancy Reynolds Elementary School for the last time Wednesday, June 10, 2009.
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Published: June 10, 2009
WESTFIELD
Alumni, faculty, staff and students said goodbye to Nancy Reynolds Elementary School today.
The red brick school that sits on a knoll overlooking Moore's Wall and Hanging Rock will soon be demolished and a new school will be built in its place. Since 1923, the school has served as a focal point for the small community of Westfield in northern Stokes County.
While the new school is being built, students at Nancy Reynolds will be going to school in pods on the campus of Pinnacle Elementary School.
Residents in the area banded together to try to save the old school. However, a Winston-Salem architecture firm concluded in a feasibility study that the school was in such disrepair that building a new school was the best option for the county.
The Stokes County Board of Education and the county's board of commissioners agreed and voted to build a new school at an estimated cost of $9.4 million.
The new school will look similar to the old school, which has red-painted bricks and a white bell tower.
Earlier today, alumni of the school and students from the graduating fifth-grade class talked about the significance of the school.
Rachel Vaden Simmons, 91, was a first-grade student in 1923 when the school opened. She remembers a Ford Model T serving as her school bus.
"I opened it up and now, I'm closing it," said Simmons. "My job is finished."
Simmons went to school at Nancy Reynolds for 10 years then ran away to get married.
Cole Smith, a fifth grader who will go to Piney Grove Middle School in the fall, said he liked going to an older school.
"I don't think there were any inconveniences," Smith said. "I just love the little red school. I had a really good time."
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