WILLINGBORO - Books, papers and various lesson materials sat piled on desks and across the floor of Sherrie Epstein's second-grade classroom at J. Cresswell Stuart Elementary School yesterday.

The first day of classes is a month away, but Epstein wasn't wasting any time preparing her room for students. The building will be used as an elementary school for the first time in 14 years, and district employees are busy organizing classrooms and making renovations for more than 300 expected preschool-to-fifth-grade students.

Epstein used to work at Hawthorne Elementary School in the township, and yesterday she was sorting through materials that she had taken from that school.

"I basically took it all and figured I would organize it here," she said.

Epstein's husband, Jeff, accompanied her to the Sunset Road school.

"We had two SUVs to bring over her stuff," he said.

Superintendent Alonzo Kittrels said the district would spend up to $100,000 this summer for renovations to the school, including painting, repairing floor tiles and converting former offices into classrooms.

"We're going to have to do some work, but it's nothing we can't do," said Ron Taylor, the district maintenance foreman.

According to Willingboro's redistricting plan, 183 students living in the Somerset Park section who attended the S.W. Bookbinder, Martin Luther King Jr. and W.R. James Elementary schools will transfer to Stuart School. Ninety-seven students living in Rittenhouse Park and 24 living in the Fairmount Park section who attended James will transfer to Stuart School.

"Willingboro is unique in its park schools," Kittrels said. "It was important to me youngsters have every opportunity to attend schools in the parks they live and go to school with the friends they play with."

Kittrels said the district needed to reopen Stuart School to free up space in Willingboro's seven other elementary schools for art and music classrooms and child-study teams. The Workplace Readiness Center for special-education students will also be located in each school instead of at Stuart School.

Named for a prominent local farmer, the school was among the first built by developer Levitt & Sons. It closed in 1990 because of declining enrollment. The district leased space there to several outside organizations for several years before putting its special-education students there in 2000.

Burlington County Day Care will still lease five rooms in the building, Kittrels said.

"It's a great building, and we ought to make use of it," he said.

Email: jbernstein@phillyBurbs.com