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Pella Christian Grade School is receiving a significant face lift this summer. Principal David De Jong says the school’s main entrance is being dressed up on the outside, but is also being upgraded inside as well.

“The big reason why people wanted to improve the front entrance was to improve safety by redirecting the flow of traffic,” said De Jong. “What happened was – as many parents know – as people entered our building, it was so easy to not stop in the office to sign in. Now we’ll have a set of doors directing all of our parents into the office and all of our visitors into the office to sign in before they go into our school.”

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The new entrance will also include a new awning and signage that will make the front of the school visible from a block away. A newly paved parking lot on the north side of the building is also being completed. De Jong says the improvements at Pella Christian Grade School were selected as the top needs for the facilities by those with children attending the school.

“We put together a long-range planning committee, and we asked our parents and our constituents, ‘What do you think we need to improve?’, and two themes came to the top,” said De Jong. “Those themes were the front entrance and parking.”

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The upgrades are being funded by a $150,000 anonymous donation that was directed to go toward school improvements. De Jong says all of the new changes at the school will be in place and finished by the time students return to school in late August.