Goodbye to a School

Friday was the final day of the school year for students in the Georgetown (Texas) school district.   It’s generally accepted that things come to an end.  The range of emotions is always a roller coaster of feelings.   One school, however, George Washington Carver Elementary, home to 427 students this year, quietly closed its doors forever.   The school opened in 1964.   In the upcoming academic year, a new Carver will open, with its own history yet to come.   But at the original Carver Friday afternoon, a building wasn’t the only retiree.  Two kindergarten teachers, Kim Giese and Adelle Ayala were also coming to the end of their long careers, mostly spent here in Carver’s hallways.   After the kids had left, each spent a bit of quiet time in their empty rooms before turning out the lights and moving on to the next phase of their lives.  When everyone had pretty much cleared out in the late afternoon, Pedro Barahona, a custodian at Carver for 14 years, found time to give the hall floors a fresh wax job.  He will move to the new Carver, with its shiny floors and pristine walls, but I’m guessing he’ll remember these spaces for a long time, too.   These photos were taken for a story by Jonathan Adams in the Williamson County Sun.