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‘‘The energy of this place feels lighter,” added Xaivia Inness, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Washington, D.C.

The first day of classes in the new building Jan. 8 was the culmination of several months of deliberation, planning and moving for the 15-student private school, all in the middle of the school year. But administrators said the relocation was worth it.

‘‘We think being in this nicer, brighter space is going to help us,” said Michael DeHart, head of school. Thornton Friends, a Quaker school founded in 1974, consists of an upper school for grades 9-12 that meets at the Episcopal⁄Anglican Church of the Transfiguration in Silver Spring and a middle school that had met at St. Stephen Lutheran Church for 14 years. But when St. Stephen said it was planning to do renovations from last November until March of this year, the middle school decided to move instead of teaching through the construction.

‘‘You’re not going to give yourself over to learning,” said Marcy Seitel, principal of the middle school as well as a teacher. ‘‘It’s tough enough to learn in middle school.”

Thornton Friends selected the Unitarian church for several reasons, DeHart and Seitel said. It was only a mile farther down New Hampshire Avenue from the upper school, and the Unitarians have a similar philosophy as the Quakers. And there was the building itself.

‘‘This was the really obvious choice,” DeHart said. ‘‘It’s a beautiful, bright space.”

Paula Cote, the church administrator, said the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring also liked the beliefs shared by Unitarians and Quakers. Cote hopes the middle school students and the church’s preschoolers will work together in the future, mentor program or otherwise.

The school is located on the ground floor of the church’s Sanctuary Building. The space is shared, except for a few locked closets for the school, because the church uses and rents it out on some weeknights and weekends. The sanctuary has become the school’s ‘‘Big Room,” where students gather for moments of silence and reflection twice a week.

The ‘‘office” for the four teachers is two desks in a small hallway leading to one of the classrooms. (Seitel’s principal’s office, created by walling off part of an existing kitchen, is across the courtyard from the school.)

The classrooms, actually one large room divided into three by collapsible walls, are indicative of a school still unpacking. The smallest classroom has boxes of church and school materials stacked next to each other in the back of the room, near a copy machine; the other two classrooms are spacious and mostly bare except for desks and whiteboards.

Hannah Chick was still getting adjusted to having a room solely for her science classes. At St. Stephen, her room had to be converted into a gathering space for moments of silence and reflection. ‘‘It’s definitely a step up from where we were before,” she said. ‘‘The kids feel this is more like a school.”

Chick said the hardest part of the move was awaiting word for when the school could move. Independent schools like Thornton Friends must receive approval from the Maryland State Board of Education before relocating. Thornton Friends was granted permission Jan. 3 and began moving the same day.

‘‘We knew what we had to do; it was just stressful waiting for everything to happen,” Chick said. ‘‘We had to keep going like everything was normal.”

Thornton Friends plans to stay at the church for the duration of its three-year lease, DeHart said. Long-term, the school wants to build a new Upper School on property it owns near Transfiguration and move the Middle School into the current Upper School, he said.