Editor’s note: This is first in a series of stories about each school in Houston County. The list will go alphabetically elementary, middle and high school. The Sun News will follow Houston County with Peach County.

BONAIRE -- Bonaire Elementary School is one of the oldest schools in Houston County.

The main building was built in 1960, but the need for more classrooms caused the school to expand.

“We are growing very quickly,” said Principal J. Willis Jones, who has been with the school for three years. Prior to coming to Bonaire Elementary, Jones was the assistant principal for Kings Chapel Elementary and Perry Primary schools.

Bonaire Elementary has 727 students from pre-Kindergarten through fifth grade.

With 32 homerooms, the school has 48 teachers, three administrators, two full-time office staff, a bookkeeper, counselor and health technician.

Bonaire Elementary offers a number of clubs for students, including a percussion group called Bonaire Beat, a Junior Master Gardeners Club and a newspaper club.

The gardening around the school and in the courtyard is done by the students.

Bonaire Elementary has won several awards, both locally and statewide.

The school was one of six schools in Houston County that won Single Statewide Accountability System awards from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement for the 2010-11 school year. It was among 259 schools in Georgia recognized for high achievement on standardized tests.

It was also named a Georgia School of Excellence in 1991 and 2009.

“It’s the teachers in the building that makes us a good school,” said Jones.

During the summer, Jones is the only one who is contracted to be there, but he said he was never alone while he worked as teachers came in and worked on the new common core standards curriculum.

He noted some of his predecessors have been former superintendent David Carpenter and Eric Payne, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning at the Houston County Board of Education.

“You really can’t go wrong in Houston County,” Jones said.