Two towering yellow box trees greet people as they enter the ACT's newest public school in Throsby.
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The campus designed by architect Gray Puksand and constructed by Icon will welcome 195 preschool to year six children on Monday.
The inaugural Throsby School principal, Annamaria Zuffo, will be enthusiastically meeting the students and their parents after a long and exciting build-up.
"Twenty-seven years I've been teaching and I never thought in my first job at Fraser Primary School in 1995 that I would be opening my own school as a principal," she said.
"So it's a dream job and I feel so privileged."
The school was designed to accommodate the existing yellow box trees, which will play a role in developing the story and culture of the school.
Executive teachers have developed a narrative of Ms Zuffo as the tree, the teachers as branches, children as saplings and seeds, and parents as the leaves.
"We are talking about building that story together. Who are we? What's our identity as a school?" she said.
"And we're going to obviously get the children involved in telling that story as well ... Which might lead to things like creating the houses for our sporting teams and things like that."
The campus can accommodate 450 in kindergarten to year 6 and 132 preschoolers, with options for future expansion if needed.
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The buildings will accommodate four learning communities of preschool, kinder to year 2, year 3 and 4, and year 5 and 6. There's also a dedicated STEM area for any class to use for science, technology, engineering and maths lessons.
A large multi-sport indoor facility, complete with lines for basketball, volleyball, netball, badminton, a stage and music rehearsal rooms, is set to open by the end of February.
An expansive library looks out across the suburbs and hills and opens onto an undercover balcony area that will be accessible for the children to learn and play.
The school is dotted with clever features for creative learning, such as desks that double as whiteboards and indoor tree houses to spark children's imaginations.
The playground features in-ground trampolines and handball courts. There's more work to be done on constructing the oval, outdoor courts and an indigenous garden.
The school meets airtightness standards and can go into a bushfire mode for short periods of time to keep out smoke. A 220,000 litre in-ground rainwater tank is hidden from view but will collect plenty of water to irrigate the grounds.
COVID and wet weather have hampered the construction of the school but Ms Zuffo expects it to be complete by mid to late March.
"They've done an amazing job to get it all ... finished to this level."
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