First Look: Students got a tour of new Ruder Elementary School last week

Ruder Elementary students, clad in bright yellow hard hats, got their first tour of the school’s new addition Friday morning with Swank Enterprises construction superintendent Monte Moultray as their tour guide.

Moultray, a Columbia Falls resident whose own daughters attended Ruder, said he’d been hoping to give the students a sneak peak of the construction process for a while, but wanted to wait until things were put together enough to have the heat on.

The nearly 30,000 square foot addition, sandwiched between the older school and gym and extending back towards the northwest, will contain an additional nine classrooms, a music room with an elevated stage, a conference room, a nurses station, a kitchen and cafeteria and new secure entrance.

As students filed around stud-framed rooms, Moultray deftly broadened their construction vocabulary, introducing them to terms like “OSB,” “trusses,” and “glue-lam beams.”

Moultray stated that students should be fully using the new addition by the beginning of next school year, when the remodeling of the old school will then take place, although some old building remodels should begin as soon as school lets out for the summer.