DEERING — It was clear from the cheers which part of the Dawson-Bryant Elementary expansion was most popular with the gathered students.

As Dawson-Bryant Superintendent Jim Payne read through the list of additions in the $19.5 million complex, he had barely made it through “a new playground” before the soon-to-be-broken ground erupted with the applause of hundreds of happy children.

But local families, students and teachers will find plenty to cheer about in the facility for which ground was broken Monday afternoon.

The expansion project for the school — the last in the district to receive a renovation or new building — calls for around 25,000 square feet of the current structure to be demolished, and around 50,000 square feet to be constructed.

The new structure will allow for several new classrooms, a stage, a multimedia center and library, a new kitchen and cafetorium and plenty of new parking. Second only

to the applause for the playground was the announcement of a full-size gymnasium with a new scoreboard and bleachers.

“Now that rocks!” exclaimed one student from the crowd.

But Payne said he has a much more difficult time picking his favorite part of the new building.

“I think it’s probably multi-fold,” Payne said. “Number one is the additional classes, which will allow us to continue to individualize instruction for our kids to get them where they need to be and beyond. I think the stage is very important for the artistic people in our building.

“One thing also that’s always concerned me is the lack of parking, and now we’ll have event parking, parking for staff and we’ll have the separation of the community from the bus drivers, so the drivers won’t always be looking over their shoulders for a child that’s slipped in between the buses.”

If all goes according to plan, the project will be complete in about two years, so most of the school’s students will be able to take advantage of it.

Talks about the plan had begun as early as 2001, when discussions with the building’s architects, Tanner Stone and Company, were started. Payne said that the hold up was the result of school officials vying for more funding for the project at the state capitol.

“We felt we needed to fight for what we believed in,” Payne said. “Bringing everybody to have that same understanding. We went to Columbus, we fought our battles, and at the end of the day they agreed to the majority of our requests.”

That’s music to the ears of Rick Roach, a kindergarten teacher at the school for eight years, who said his young students had been excited about the expansion, even more so than their older counterparts.

“I tried to get across to my kids that they were going to get to experience it, Some of the older kids were just like ‘Whatever, we’re out of here,’” Roach said with a laugh.

“We’re excited, that’s a definite. It’s been a longtime coming, waiting for something to get rolling on this.”