Donna Czmowski is used to people asking her to let them in.

The Dakota Middle School custodian has the keys to all the interesting places at the old school building, and she knows them well. Czmowski even attended the school, graduating in 1973, when it was Rapid City Central High School, and she loves to tell stories about it.

"Hopefully, they keep this open," she said. "This is a classy old building."

The east wing of the school was started in 1923, but the building wasn't completed until 1936, according to editions of the Pine Cone yearbook from that time. Seventy-one years later, thousands of Rapid City students have walked its glossy terrazzo floors, sat for an assembly in the curved auditorium seats, and cheered for the Cobblers, and now the Nuggets, from the oak bleachers in the third-floor gymnasium.

This week, another fresh crop of sixth-graders arrived at Dakota, ready to add their own class's history to the building. Right now, they're just awed at the size of the school, and asking Czmowski for help with their locker combinations.

But someday, they may be the eighth-graders who ask the principal's permission for Czmowski to show them the "tunnels" they've heard run though the basement. Years later, they'll be like the reunion groups that ask her to show them the old auditorium and the gym, so they can see if it still looks like it did when they were teenagers, even if they don't.

The old-timers tell her about what it was like when they were in school; some remember when the auditorium had stained glass. She tells the kids about things that happened in her time - like the December 1972 day when a fire damaged the Washington school that used to be near Central, and all the students had to evacuate without their coats into the cold.

This year, the school district will discuss the future of the building. A consulting firm said it is in "poor" condition, has "poor" educational suitability and should be closed, with students divided among the other four middle schools.

The closure of a historic school is never easy for a community, but the consultants who made the recommendation say Rapid City may not mind so much.

They surveyed the 175 people who attended a series of community forums in February about the district's facilities needs, and only 12 percent said historical preservation is "most important" or "important" in rating and planning for schools. Rating much higher to the group was providing appropriate learning spaces, safety, technology, heating and cooling systems and health/environmental issues.

"Our community showed a great deal of indifference to historic preservation if it was going to cost a lot of money," said Mike Kenton, director of support services for the school district.

The school's graduates are divided on whether keeping the old building open is important. For the most part they don't mind if the district stops using it for a school, as long as it's not torn down.

"I personally would hate to see it go," said Norm Nelson, a graduate of the Class of 1960 and a member of the city's Historic Preservation Commission.

He said as long as the building can be fitted with the technology and equipment students need today, it's structurally sound and could still be used. But if not, it can still play a role in the community, he said.

"It's too valuable a building to dispose of and a significant part of Rapid City's history," Nelson said.

The building is not on the National Register of Historic Places and therefore the commission wouldn't have a formal role in the discussion of what it should become. "But I'm sure we would chime in," Nelson said.

Nelson said the building could be made into living space, and also suggested something akin to Sioux Falls' Washington Pavilion, a meeting and performance venue in the old Washington High School.

Daniel Stanton of Rapid City had the same idea.

"The soccer field across the street would provide plenty of parking, while leaving the grounds available for greenspace and park," he suggested in an e-mail to the Journal. "It is the most natural way to stretch the downtown to encompass the Dahl and the library."

He also suggested the building could provide classroom space for local colleges.

"It's tough for me to think of a better spot for a lot of things that would be really good for Rapid City."

Rex Smith said it's not up to him say what should happen to the school. He was part of the Class of 1939, the first class to go all the way through the building as a high school.

Smith, a star debater for the school, said his class was a solid group of people who became lifelong friends.

They were proud of their school - not because it was bound to be historic, but because it was so "modern."

The Pine Needle school newspaper that came out Feb. 26, 1937 - Smith's sophomore year - boasted that the school had "every up-to-date convenience available."

By 1978, the pride had faded, and the students were excited to leave it behind and move into that era's new school - the new Central building.

"The campus of the new school will remain the nicest in the state for two reasons," student reporter Katy Flynn wrote in the Pine Needle. "One is good old 'Cobbler Pride,' the other is absolute awe. For so long, Central students have been studying in either drafty classrooms or giant blast furnaces. We've been hustling through dirty gray corridors, catching pneumonia from passing through the icy lobby and from meeting our friends in a dinky cold cafeteria. This new school is like a new and different world."

Other students of that era had more nostalgia for the old Central.

"Leaving an old school is like throwing away your favorite blue jeans," Robin Cline wrote.

Laura Johnson wrote, "But the memories still remain, locked within brick walls, and only the ones who attended hold the key."

People who've lived as long as Smith know things will continue to change and evolve, even if he fondly remembers the day when boys wore ties to school and students didn't need as much discipline at school because they got it at home.

"Everything has its place, even my class," he said. "We're passing out of the picture."