A heart is painted on the sidewalk in front of James O. Kaler Elementary School in South Portland on April 2. (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer)

SOUTH PORTLAND — It was quiet a few minutes before dismissal, except for the wind rushing through the trees, a few chirping birds, the flag whipping into its pole and a distant siren. 

Julie von Ehr, an educational technician, wheeled out a speaker the size of a suitcase on Monday afternoon. A few parents started to line up.

Music blared as teachers formed a tunnel from the front door to the school buses, dancing over to the students to offer a high-five or hug as they left James Otis Kaler Elementary School for the last time. 

This school year was Kaler’s last, and Monday was the last day of school.

Ryan Conway told his students to keep playing basketball and eat a lot of ice cream during the summer. He started tearing up behind his black sunglasses. 

Some students ran to their parents, their too-large backpacks bouncing and keychains jingling. Others clung to their teachers.

Principal Myra Caron waited by the door to a school bus, saying goodbye to each student before they climbed up the metal stairs.

The doors closed with a hiss, and the driver honked as the school bus rounded the cul-de-sac and pulled out of the parking lot for the last time. 

Caron waved. “This is the best school ever,” she said to herself, wiping a tear away.

The school yard quieted down, except for a few children shrieking on the field near the playground. They weren’t quite ready to say goodbye. 

First grader Henry Von was one of them. 

Doug, his father, sat on a shady bench more than 30 minutes after dismissal, watching his son run around with a football and his friends.

Henry’s heading to Frank I. Brown Elementary School next year. “He thinks of it as an adventure,” Von said. He’ll bike instead of walking the six blocks to Kaler. 

PACKING IT IN

The next morning, Kaler was buzzing. Teachers popped between their classrooms and the front hallway, adding to and grabbing items from the four folding tables as they gradually packed up. 

One table overflowed with board games, puzzles and toys, including a bright red plastic barn and a bin of Lincoln Logs. Another had piles of children’s books. Another table collected craft supplies including skeins of yarns and giant bottles of washable paint. 

The building, which is owned by the school department, will be “mothballed” for the foreseeable future, according to Caron, until the district comes up with a permanent plan for it. 

Around the corner, librarian Kathryn Fiorini sorted books to be sent to the remaining four elementary schools. Other school librarians stopped by and called dibs on the books they wanted for their collections. The books with silver stickers are headed to Waldo T. Skillin Elementary School. The ones with red dots are headed to Helena H. Dyer Elementary School.

First grade teacher Rachael Duddy packed up her classroom down the hall.

It was mostly bare on Tuesday morning. The cubbies were empty, as were the bulletin boards. Books were scattered on a cluster of four tiny desks pushed together. 

Duddy will be a fourth grade teacher at Brown next year, so she’s also weeding out her materials and studying a new curriculum. She’s already donated most of her library, though she held on to the chapter books, nonfiction stories and student favorites, like “The Magic School Bus.” 

She said her students felt a mix of excitement and nervousness about going to a new school. 

“There were lots of conversations about which schools have the best playgrounds,” she said. 

Duddy will miss the Kaler community. 

“I thought teaching was a solitary profession,” she said. “At Kaler, it’s been the opposite. I’ve never felt alone.”

Across the hall, art teacher Christina Grygiel looked through her cabinet of paints and pastels, trying to figure out what to keep. 

“Only so much will fit in the remaining schools,” she said. She’ll be teaching at Dyer and Dora Small Elementary School next year, and hasn’t heard an official plan about what will happen to the extra materials. 

“It’s sad to think about the supplies just rotting,” she said. 

The drying racks were still full of student art, and the repurposed plastic yogurt containers by the sink were still full of paint brushes. 

Upstairs, the desks in Melanie Stewart’s second-grade classroom were still set up neatly in their rows. And every desk was covered with a pile of supplies, an organizational system only known to her. 

“I’ve collected 10 years worth of things,” she said, surveying the clutter.  

On one desk, there was a pack of rainbow highlighters. A bin with a sequin-covered fedora and a cup of plastic eyeballs rested on another. 

Stewart moved classrooms once during her decade at Kaler, and she said this time feels harder. Everything has to go into boxes. Everything has to move at once. 

“Change is inherent in everything,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily make it easy.” 

Throughout the day, teachers made multiple trips to the eight trash cans set up in the hallway outside the gymnasium. Flat cardboard boxes were piled high on the cafeteria tables.

Caron, wearing her field day shirt, emptied a trash can into the dumpster out back. 

She’s taught in the district for 22 years, and after her last day on June 26, she doesn’t know what she’ll do next. 

“I haven’t been able to see beyond this,” she said. 

She delivered a speech at a staff breakfast potluck in the morning, and had to type up her notes to avoid getting too emotional. She thanked everyone for their contributions to the community and wished them luck in their next endeavors as they shared bagels, fruit, egg dishes and lots of coffee.

The gymnasium will once again be filled with the sound of play when the summer recreation program begins next week. 

And then, the school will fall silent for good.