PRESQUE ISLE – With the first two days of school as a measure, local middle school Principal Larry Fox said Friday that the year is shaping up to be a success at the newly renovated and expanded facility.

Presque Isle Middle School opened its doors for the first time Thursday, after 13 months of construction at the Skyway Street facility.

The finished building has a new auditorium, a new, larger library and media center, all new floors, and new lockers equipped with electrical outlets where pupils can charge their laptops.

Two years ago, SAD 1 officials approved the $5.3 million project in order to house the district’s entire sixth- to eighth-grade population, about 465 pupils. The district decided to shut down the aging Cunningham Middle School and complete renovations and a 31,000-square-foot expansion at Skyway Middle School. The building, renamed Presque Isle Middle School, has the capacity to accommodate 500 pupils.

Construction work on the facility wrapped up last week.

While school officials Friday were in just their second day of school, Fox said, things seem to be falling into place more quickly than expected. “We’re at the point I thought we might take three to four days to get to,” he said.

The changes school officials have made have centered on lunchtime and busing issues but, Fox said, “the problems we’ve had would be things we’d encounter if we had two separate schools,” Fox said.

The principal said the first week of school operations has gone well, in part because of two events the district held just before school started – a community open house Tuesday and a pupil orientation Wednesday. Fox said about 800 people attended the open house, and about 97 percent of pupils and their parents attended the student orientation.

“I think that is largely responsible for how smoothly the school year started,” Fox said. “We were able to communicate almost everything we needed to with the student and their parents. We were able to get the message out to folks, and I think that helped us in getting off to a nice start.”