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Lake Creek opens doors Monday photo by Jim Craven Custodian Jim Bowman sweeps floors before waxing them at the Lake Creek Learning Center last week. The new school will open Monday. New school saves long bus rides By Vicki Guarino of the Mail Tribune LAKE CREEK -- The colorful, quilted pillows everyone made during geometry lessons weeks ago might be the only seating come Monday. No matter. Students, parents and teacher Georgina Kennedy say they've waited long enough for the opening of the $1 million Lake Creek Learning Center. A delayed load of chairs and desks won't stop them now. "We have the pillows, so they'll have something to sit on at least," says Kennedy. The small, eastern Jackson County school opens Monday for its first class of 21 grade-schoolers. This first day of school comes after 3 years of planning, financing and building -- and many more years of wishing and hoping for a local school. Probably no one has wanted the school as long as Kennedy, a Lake Creek resident and Eagle Point teacher who for years has watched kindergartners spend up to three hours on the bus every day getting to and from school. The learning center not only makes school services more accessible to young students, it also opens untapped community resources. Local musicians, painters, historians are among the volunteers willing to work with Lake Creek students. "I like that there is a school in our community to be able to draw on resources that are here," Kennedy says. Students in the Learning Center's first class say they like the building's heavy timbers, its newness and its wide-open interior. "I like how big the library is," says fourth-grader Kathy Pelican. Throughout Christmas vacation, families have been checking on building progress and helping unpack school supplies. The volunteers work around contractors who are finishing the final touches. For Kennedy, getting the building ready for Monday has been a daily rush of sorting through supplies and seeing to construction details. The three-room school is the 4,000-student Eagle Point district's first building project in 20 years. And its opening will be the first time since the 1940s that school has been held in the eastern Jackson County ranching community. The school reverses a decades-long trend of centralized education in the Eagle Point area, says Kennedy. The shift reflects family needs and educational research showing that students can learn better in small schools that cater to their needs. The cost of the school will be covered by a special state allotment due the Eagle Point district because of the distance to Lake Creek. Although the aim at this point is to get ready for students, Kennedy and the neighbors who have helped build the school have grander plans. "It could be a community center of lifelong learning for the whole community," says Kennedy. It could offer the sparsely populated community a library collection for adults and facilities for a variety of classes and events. The Learning Center already has received a donation of 14 boxes of adult books. Someday, Kennedy says, the center might be able to associate with the county library system. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA