As Fairdale Elementary School students walked out of the school's doors for the last time, there was still some commotion inside the building.

Teachers packed boxes and Tupperware containers with their books, decorations and teaching tools.

Mittens, hats and sweaters were strewn in a lost-and-found corner.

And 11-year-old Nash Phillips struggled to push a wheelbarrow full of "treasures" to the side doors.

Phillips and her friend, Shannon Harris, were hoarding the items Fairdale is discarding. Clipboards, candles, plastic trays and a clear Lazy-Susan, water bottles, film cartons, cookie tins, chalk, and cardboard odds and ends - one school's trash, but two girls' treasure - were piled high on the wheelbarrow.

"Our school's going to be torn down, so now we'll have lot of stuff to remember it by," Phillips said matter-of-factly.

But there was one problem - getting it home. The two girls live only blocks away, but they couldn't take the wheelbarrow off school grounds.

"We might try to slide it all the way home, or we might have to make three or four trips," Harris said.

The two friends said they will use most of their treasures for crafts - like gluing cotton balls and paper to a film carton to make a penguin, Phillips said.

And Harris planned on using some of the cardboard trays to decorate her bedroom.

"But I just cleaned my desk out, so I don't know how happy my family's going to be about all this stuff," she said, hoping her room is big enough to hold it all.

Harris, who just completed fifth grade, transferred to Fairdale last fall and said she wants to stay at the school.

But she and Phillips, who has been at Fairdale for years, will attend Pineview next year.

Down the hall, Carla Larsen's fourth-grade class finished up their activities. Earlier in the morning, they sat in a circle and talked about the summer, their feelings about the school closure and how to find Larsen's phone number in the phone book if they need to talk to her.

"They got lots of free books from the library, too, so we're encouraging them to read and write all summer long," Larsen said.

For many children, it's scary to be attending a new, unfamiliar school.

"I'm afraid I might lose my friends and not make new ones," said fourth-grader Cristalina Treto, who will also attend Pineview next year.

For resource teacher Paula Cool, though, the change is an opportunity to see new perspectives of teaching and to meet new people - she believes God has a plan for everyone, she said.

That doesn't mean she isn't sad to be leaving the school she has called home since 1977.

"Yesterday afternoon one of my kids caught me being teary-eyed," she said. Her job, working with students with special needs, means she works closely with the same students year after year and forms close bonds with them.

"Some of these kids I've had since first grade, so that will be difficult," Cool said. "I'll need to keep in touch."