Harriet Lapointe, librarian for Colt Andrews School, talks with Dean Blackmar, of Johnson Insulation in East Providence, in the new media room, on the third floor of Colt School. Below, part the expanded facility occupies land of the former Pastime Theater.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

BRISTOL

Just before 9 a.m. yesterday, principal Tracey McGee stepped up and clanged a bell to get the attention of the crowd gathered outside Colt Andrews School.

She forgot to bring a bullhorn, so in her loudest voice she welcomed the hundreds of students and parents gathered under the bright morning sun for the first day of school.

“Good morning, everybody!” she yelled.

And with that school opened again at Colt Andrews after two years in which its two historic buildings on Hope Street had been closed so they could be expanded and renovated. After directing the fifth-graders and kindergarten students to their respective classrooms, McGee made sure to acknowledge the architects and construction crews “who worked 24/7 making this ready for all of you.”

It was a last-minute scramble to get enough of the $14-million project finished so the elementary school’s 360 students from kindergarten to sixth grade could move in for the start of the year.

A.F. Lusi Construction had as many as 70 workers in the two buildings over the past several weeks doing tiling, plastering and other work, said Bristol Warren Regional School Committee member Marjorie McBride. A team of residents and Roger Williams University students volunteered their time on Monday and Tuesday to move boxes of supplies into the school and unpack them. A certificate of occupancy wasn’t issued until yesterday morning.

“It’s been such a whirlwind to try and get things done,” said project manager Christopher Daly.

The original building plan for the school was put forward in 2004, but the project was delayed when town officials objected to the district’s proposal to build an addition behind the Colt building. Instead, the town took possession of the Pastime Theater on Bradford Street and leveled it to make room for an annex behind the Andrews building.

The project started slowly after the last day of school in June 2006 when crews started removing lead and asbestos from the buildings. While that work was being done, Providence architect Luis A. Torrado finalized plans for the buildings.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2007 when A.F. Lusi, a Smithfield company, broke ground on the renovations.

The expansion allowed the downtown school to grow from a two-grade school into a six-grade school with three classes for each grade. It also gave the district enough classrooms to close both the Byfield and Reynolds schools as part of a plan to consolidate buildings.

The bulk of the work has been done. The six classrooms in the addition to Andrews were in use yesterday as was a new multipurpose room there. Two classrooms added to the first floor of Colt were also being used.

But there is still much to be done.

The kindergarten and first-grade library in the new annex is without a large window that will face Bradford Street. The window, one of the most distinctive features of the addition, was fashioned after the curves of a baseball cap, said Torrado who was at the school yesterday.

The window is so unusual that only one company in New England is capable of manufacturing it. Although the district ordered it in April, it has yet to arrive.

The school’s main library on the top floor of the Colt building also needs to be completed. Under Torrado’s design, a drop ceiling was removed to expose a skylight above along with wooden trusses and support beams. Natural light filters down through the skylight and a glass wall that connects to a renovated art room.

But shelving hasn’t been set up in the airy room, and the school’s 10,000-book collection is still inside the old library shared by Byfield and Reynolds schools in the Bristol Statehouse on High Street.

“I’m the most patient person in the school,” quipped librarian Harriet Lapointe as she looked over the empty space yesterday.

District Supt. Edward P. Mara was at the school’s opening along with McBride and other members of the School Committee.

He said that over the past two weeks he started getting a little nervous about whether the work would be completed in time for the first day of school.

“But we knew that everybody was working as hard as they possibly could,” he said. “And they came through.”

akuffner@projo.com