SPRINGFIELD -- Students, staff and teachers kicked off the building expansion for Weaver Elementary School on Wednesday. The project for the school on Douglas Avenue at Division Street will cost more than $5 million.

The addition will include new art, music and computer science classrooms. The teachers for those subjects now travel from classroom to classroom. Fifth grade classes that are now in trailers will also be in the addition.

A $96.5 million bond issue approved by voters in April 2006 will pay for the project. Air conditioning is also part of the Weaver building project.

School officials anticipate the addition will be done a year from now, with other renovations, including air conditioning, done by the end of 2008.

The school also will become a community center for the neighborhood with room for meetings and after-school programs. The district says it will eventually link seamlessly with nearby Grant Beach Park, as the latest "school-park," a partnership project between the Springfield School District and the Springfield-Greene County Parks Department.

For more information on all 25 projects funded under the bond issue approved in 2006, click “Bond Projects” on the left side of the school district’s Web site.