Kindergartners swing during recess at Warm Springs K-8 Academy in 2014. 

Thirteen-year-old Ellikaya Lopez was skeptical when she learned the Jefferson County School District was building a new school in Warm Springs.

“At first I thought it was stupid, all these res dogs come down here,” Ellikaya said, referencing the feral dogs who run around the area. “And I didn’t think it made sense to go to middle school in Madras for two years and then come here for one and then graduate.”

The Warm Springs K-8 Academy opened this fall, replacing the aging K-5 Warm Springs Elementary School and drawing in students, such as Ellikaya, who live on the reservation but attended Jefferson County Middle School. The $21.4 million project, funded evenly by the Jefferson County School District and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, isn’t only about a new building. Before the school opened, its staff worked on developing a new curriculum, one feature of which employs self-paced digital lessons that use the building’s numerous computers. The school also worked to better integrate tribal services, placing a nurse in the building and opening a community room to tribe members.

Now that the 650-student academy is approaching its first winter break, Ellikaya concedes, “It’s been pretty awesome.”

Part of the awesomeness comes from the relative lack of spiders.

“There were a lot in the old school,” said Patty Speakthunder, a sixth-grader. “Also it was so close to the road, all these semis passed by. That was scary.”

Thalia Culpus, an eighth-grader, likes how every classroom has windows, which wasn’t the case at the old school. Even more, Ellikaya added, the view from a spot high up above the Deschutes River is a major improvement.

“You look out and you can see the track, football field and then this big ol’ mountain,” she said. “I like that.”

Josiah Spino, a seventh-grader, noted the playground is a bit smaller, but definitely more hospitable to his favorite recess activity — parkour, a sport that treats jungle gyms more like gymnastic equipment or a wheel-less skatepark.

“It’s safer than the one at the old elementary school,” he said. “If you fall off, there’s mats. At the old one, there were wood chips, and if you fell they would stick in your arm. The slides are faster too. The old ones were metal, and they could get hot.”

Despite the speedy slides, not everything about the new school is perfect. A petition is circulating among the students, urging the administration to serve whole pears in the cafeteria instead of the diced variety soaked in syrup.

There’s also the matter of gum. At first it was allowed, but then, Ellikaya said, it began appearing “under desks, on walls, in the milk cartons and even on the ceiling.” She concedes “the school got a little sticky,” but, as Thalia says, “gum is an addiction” and having it helps some students focus.

“We’re going to fight for it,” Ellikaya said. “This is a democracy.”

Middle schools aren’t typically a democracy, and Principal Glenna DeSouza clarified that gum is allowed on a teacher-by-teacher basis.

“It’s something we need to work out,” DeSouza said. “It’s a new school, there’s a lot we need to work out.”

Ellikaya, Josiah, Patty and Thalia are helping to smooth out the kinks as elected representatives of the student body. So far, the students are optimistic about their chances to see change through.

“Ms. DeSouza gets with us and tries to understand us, even though she’s not from around here,” Thalia said. “She’s really my homie, and I really like that. I didn’t talk to my old principal so much.”

In some areas, the staff and students are already making progress. The school had a goal of lowering behavior referrals during the second month by 40 percent. After students exceeded the goal by three percentage points, they were rewarded with a school dance.

Once gum and the pear debate are addressed, the students may move on to parkour, an activity that contributed to the middle school students being barred from the playground.

“We were banned,” Ellikaya said.

“We weren’t supposed to do parkour, but we always did parkour,” Josiah added. “We’ll work on it.”

— Reporter: 541-633-2160, tleeds@bendbulletin.com