SPRINGVILLE — When Grant Elementary School opened 100 years ago, shrubs served as a fence to keep out the town's cows, which were herded past the school in the morning and home again in the evening.
The school welcomed students with a real bell tower and ringing bell.
The elementary school, 105 S. 400 East, was part of a Springville-Mapleton school district when it opened in November 1906. The Grant School — now without a bell tower, which was dismantled after it was weakened by decades of vibrations — has become part of the Nebo School District.
It will cease educating elementary-age students at the end of the year.
A celebration of the school's history and contribution to the community will be tonight at 7 p.m. at Springville Junior High School auditorium, 165 S. 700 East. The public is invited.
Grant is one of Nebo's smallest schools, with 300 students.
The district officials say they will save money by combining Grant's students with 500 other students and moving them to Springville Middle School, which will be remodeled and renamed Cherry Creek Elementary.
The Grant building will house special education offices, a teacher-training center, computer labs and the district's program for young parents.
Grant principal Mark Balzotti will be the principal of Cherry Creek. For a year, he will share duties with the principal of Brookside Elementary, which is being rebuilt.
Brookside students and teachers will attend Cherry Creek during that time.
"There's some excitement," Balzotti said. "There's mixed feelings."
"It's really a great thing to have a school in your neighborhood," said Diane Carr, 62, former Springville City Council member who is one among four generations of her family to attend Grant.
"I feel badly because the people in this neighborhood won't have a school. They'll be going to a large school and it won't quite be the same."
In all, Grant had three wings. The original 1906 two-story building was torn down in 1983. Single-story additions were added in the 1930s and 1950s and make up the school today.
Nebo Superintendent Chris Sorensen attended Grant from the third to the sixth grades. He remembers climbing the steps of the outdoor fire escapes and sliding down, which often got him and his friends in trouble.
He was at school when President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed.
"The principal, Waldo Jacobson, came into the lunchroom and asked us to be quiet and announced it," Sorensen said.
Also under Jacobson's tenure during the 1960s were different educational philosophies — notably a year-round schedule and "open school" concept.
School was year-round for about a dozen years, but students did not attend on "tracks" or predetermined shifts. Rather, their parents sent them to school when it accommodated them until 180 days had expired each year, said Jacobson, now retired.
For the open school program, teachers organized concepts into units. Students learned at their own paces, with their peers and teachers helping them as needed.
"The boys and girls would work as fast as they could each individually, so no child was left behind their ability," Jacobson said, who said Grant's test scores were among the highest in the state at the time.
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com