PRINEVILLE — Phyllis Burge arrived as an instructional assistant at Ochoco Elementary in 1978. It was her first time working in a school, and back then her kids were little. It was easy to work the same hours they were in class and share summers off.

“There wasn’t any reason to leave,” said Burge, now 66, who has outlasted eight principals at Ochoco. “The school was like another family.”

Ochoco Elementary will close this year after seven decades. The school will host summer school and day camps for a few months, and then the property will likely be sold as Crook County School District consolidates three elementary schools into two.

In 2013, voters passed a $33.5 million bond, most of which went to build a new 700-student elementary school. Ochoco’s 390 students and 50 teachers and staff will be split between Crooked River Elementary and Barnes Butte Elementary, now under construction in Prineville’s Iron Horse neighborhood. Barnes Butte Elementary will eventually also replace Crooked River Elementary, which will stay open one more year while Cecil Sly Elementary is renovated, also with money from the 2013 bond.

Burge is going to Crooked River. It will mean a longer commute, and she has heard parking there can be tricky. She’s trying to be excited. “But I was never one for change,” she added.

Ochoco opened in 1945, and the building shows its age, in good and bad ways. The radiators clank in the winter, but each classroom has a wall of windows, built-in cabinets and high ceilings. Colorful curtains hang on classroom doors and two rows of horseshoes — in honor of the mascot, the Mustangs — are printed up and down the halls.

At some point, another classroom wing was added, though few in the school can say for certain which wing came first. One has bathrooms in the classrooms, the other does not. A detached cafeteria was added in the 1980s. When Principal David Robinson needs a break, he sneaks off to play 10 minutes of basketball in the gymnasium, with pine paneling on the walls and what appears to be the original hardwood floor.

Robinson said staff has talked to students about the closing, how exciting it will be to go to a new school and meet new friends.

Asked how he feels about moving, first-grader Jack Reel shook his head and took on a pleading tone. “I’m just trying to convince Mr. Robinson to remodel the school, but he won’t.”

Yes, there are some ceiling tiles falling down, he said, but that’s no reason to close. Jack said he is going to Crooked River next year. “It’s really not fair.”

Last month, the parent-teacher organization invited the community back to Ochoco. Robinson said more than 100 people, mostly alumni, came from across the state to walk the halls and look at scrapbooks going back to 1945 with old class photos and newspaper clippings — from the time a goat wandered onto school grounds, when the cafeteria first opened, the year there wasn’t enough money for school buses. Librarian Carolyn Dunaway came across the scrapbooks in library storage a few years back.

“Someone put a lot of effort into that,” she said. “It’s just a building right now, but to a lot of people it meant a lot.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7837,

aspegman@bendbulletin.com

“There wasn’t any reason to leave. The school was like another family.” — Phyllis Burge, who’s worked at Ochoco Elementary since 1978