Students who attended their first day of classes at Bennett’s Mill Middle School Monday got the star treatment. School officials said 565 students attended the first day, and were greeted by teachers and staff workers snapping their pictures as students walked down a red carpet.

The school, located near the county’s geographic center on Lester Road adjacent to Cleveland Elementary, is the system’s first new school since Whitewater High School students moved into their new campus in 2004.

The $11.4 million school contains all the facilities a middle-school child could need, including a cafeteria, which also doubles as a facility for band and chorus concerts.

“We won’t have to go to any other school for our students to stage shows,” said principal Rae Presley-King when she gave a tour of the facility earlier this summer.

The cafeteria features a stage, along with multimedia projectors. The school features 15 science labs, 45 classrooms, six special education classrooms and three team planning rooms.

The school is also equipped with 61 security cameras and features skylights throughout the facility.

Elsewhere around the county, school spokesperson Melinda Berry-Dreisbach said everything ran smoothly and she’s waiting to get final numbers to see how enrollment figures compared with last year.

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