MOORE -- Southmoore High School -- Moore's third Class 6A high school -- opened with a flourish Thursday when more than 1,700 new students arrived for classes in the new, $44 million building.

The school is the 34th in the 159-square-mile district.

And though cold weather, rain and skyrocketing steel prices all caused problems during construction, administrators said they were "very pleased" the facility opened on time.

"We had no incidents and no problems at all," said Moore superintendent Deborah Arato. "I thought the opening day went very well."

Arato, who arrived at Southmoore at 6 a.m. Thursday, said the facility opened with all four main wings available for students. "The four main wings of the school were open and ready. We just weren't able to get the fine arts wing open in time for opening day." That wing, she said, should be open Monday. Until then, students enrolled in fine arts classes are meeting in other classrooms.

"There are always those little things that need to be done in a new school," she said. "We're just tweaking right now."

Other staff, teachers and students, she said, "had been up there volunteering to get the school ready."

"They are all so excited. Many of the students have been up there helping teachers set up and their classrooms and moving furniture around. I know the kids enjoy being engaged and they've been a huge help for the teachers."

Administrators are trying to establish an official count of the number of students at the facility, which was built to hold more than 2,400 students,.

"Right now we're doing class counts," Arato said. "We know that new students will continue to come in and, this morning, we had a number of kids waiting to enroll."

This year marks the first year that freshmen will be part of the district's high schools. Administrators made the shift because of the district's rapidly expanding enrollment.

And Thursday, many of those students -- like Arato -- said they were ready for their opening day.

"It's beautiful. It's amazing and I'm ready to start," said one sophomore, who would only give her first name as April. "I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I even went out and bought new shoes to match the school colors. It's not every day you get to start at a brand new high school."

M. Scott Carter 366-3545 scarter@normantranscript.com