Familylike was usually the first way teachers of past and present described the atmosphere at Broad Street Elementary School.

Staff gathered at the gym Thursday afternoon to unite one last time at the building. Broad Street, which has been open for 120 years, closes next week.

Center Avenue, Clearfield, Meridian and Oakland elementary schools in the Butler School District also are closing under a consolidation plan the school board approved in May.

“It’s been a family atmosphere here. You know, everybody works together. We all get along together,” said Debbie Fritzley, a first-grade teacher who has been at the school for 22 years and organized the event.

“We do things together as a family. We work through issues, and everything we’ve done for the children. We work together.”

She added, “We do things not only in the building but outside the building. We make sure our children have what they need” because the majority of students qualify for free and reduced lunches.

Numerous retired teachers and others in the community often returned to volunteer at the school at one time or another. Fritzley’s husband, mother and children all have helped.

Her mother, Philomena Bucci, used to help Esther Senople, the cafeteria head at the school, when the breakfast at school program first came out.

“She was the chocolate milk police,” Fritzley recalled. “They weren’t supposed to have it for breakfast, and they’d sneak it.”

Liane Chisholm also often comes back to volunteer. She started teaching in the original two-story brick Broad Street building during the 1971 school year, then came back and taught at the current school from 1976, the year it opened, until she retired in 2011.

She organized a hat and mitten distribution for students before each winter.

“Even though I’m retired, I’ve done it every year, including this year,” Chisholm said.

She worked with the Central Christian Church in Hermitage — she’s originally from Sharon — to get the warm clothing.

The original Broad Street Elementary building, which was razed in 1976, was plagued by flooding because it was built on a floodplain in the late 1800s. The nearby creek often flooded the school, said Helen Kay Okeson, who was a student in the mid-1950s, a teacher from 1967 to 1973 and a support staff person at the school for the past 22 years.

She’s retiring with the school closing, she said.

The last day the original school was open, coincidentally enough, was almost 40 years ago to the day that Broad Street closed: June 10, 1975. The last day of school this year is June 11.

“When I went to school here, I think one of the biggest differences is we, the kids, were all sent home for lunch,” Okeson said.

“I mean, I can’t imagine getting them back now, but they all went home for lunch and came back in the afternoon. I can remember going home because my mother watched the soap opera. I can remember watching that, and then we all went back to school.”

Okeson and Chisholm, who are best friends, met as teachers across the hall from one another in 1971.

“That’s probably one of the funniest things that’s happened,” Okeson said with a laugh. “That’s been something wonderful, really, when you think about it.”

“She became my paraprofessional later on,” Chisholm said. “So we were together all the time.”

Alicia Janosky is a more recent addition to the Broad Street staff, having been a reading specialist at the school for the past nine years. She bounced her 2-year-old son Leo on her lap Thursday.

“I’ve formed relationships with staff members that I’ll have forever,” she said.

She said the bond at Broad Street is unique. Teachers were supportive in and out of the classroom. They’d attend each other’s weddings, funerals and any other special event, like family.

She’s also been close to students and families she’s worked with, recalling one family with seven children, and she’s worked with six of them. The youngest in that family isn’t of school age yet.

“I got really sad because I’m not going to see that little girl,” Janosky said. “I think I’m going to miss the families the most.”

Some got a little choked up thinking about not being at the school next year. Janosky is going to McQuistion; Fritzley will be going to Center Township.

“Everything we do is for the last time. It’s sad. It’s just so sad,” Fritzley said. “And I thought I’d retire from here, but I guess not.”