Silver Creek celebrates kick off of extensive school renovations

Aug. 12—SELLERSBURG — Silver Creek School Corp. is kicking off facility projects that will bring transformative renovations and additions to the school district over the next few years.

On Friday, thousands of Silver Creek students filled the high school football field for a groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate the beginning of construction in the school system.

Chris Rountree, Silver Creek board president, said the district will finally have the facilities they "desperately need" and "rightfully deserve."

"Today symbolizes the commitment to the future of our schools and a much-needed investment in all of you and this community," he said.

The construction project will include extensive renovations at Silver Creek High School, including new classrooms, new labs, a new student union, a new main entrance, an expanded cafeteria and a new auditorium.

"We're hoping that in two years, this building is unrecognizable," Rountree said.

The first phase of high school renovations are expected to begin in October. Altogether, the district-wide construction project is expected to cost more than $100 million, and the total construction is projected to take place over the course of 36 to 39 months.

This summer, construction crews began site work for the relocating and rebuilding of athletic facilities and updates to infrastructure on the Silver Creek campus. The softball fields and baseball fields will be relocated to the current football field, while the football field will move to a different spot in the back of campus.

Silver Creek will be moving the bus barns to make room for the new football field, so crews are working to transform the former softball field into a parking lot that will house the buses. After that parking lot is complete, work will begin on the football facilities.

"We're really starting the infrastructure work right now, and that's probably going to take a couple more months before you see more actual facilities being constructed," Rountree said.

Silver Creek High School Principal Al Eckert said the school community has been waiting for the project for a long time. The expanded capacity will increase opportunities for programming and collaboration in the school building.

"It's going to be a complete modernization of all of the things we're currently offering," he said. "The teachers have done a very good job of offering the programming, the students have been very great about getting along in cramped spaces, but the need was there a long time ago, and we're playing catch-up a little bit. We're going to be very happy when this project is done, because they've put together a wonderful design that's really going to work for our kids."

After tackling the high school project, Silver Creek will proceed with renovations at the middle school and primary school, including classroom additions.

Silver Creek Middle School Principal Christy Nunn said the building projects will be a welcome change for the school, and it will include additions such as a new performing arts area and a new Project Lead the Way space.

"As the plans grow, I'm looking at having some of those new spaces," she said. "We are running out of spaces now, so it will be great to have some of those big open spaces."

Rountree asks for the community's patience during the construction project, saying "this will be a marathon, not a sprint."

"As with any construction project, especially of this magnitude, there are going to be inconveniences, there are going to be frustrations, and there are going to be disappointments," he said.

For many years, school leaders have been discussing the need for renovating outdated school buildings at Silver Creek, it was one of the major reasons behind the split of West Clark Community Schools into the separate Silver Creek and Borden-Henryville school corporations in 2020.

Rachel Bright, a Silver Creek board member, said Friday's groundbreaking "symbolizes all the hard work that has been put into updating our facilities for the past several years,"

"For it to finally accumulate to this point is just overwhelming joy and pride," she said. "I'm looking forward to our students getting the facilities that they deserve, and we appreciate our stakeholder's support of this also."

The addition of new classrooms is critical to keep up with growth in the area, Rountree said.

"With the development that's going on in Sellersburg, we need it to have to the capacity to handle the students that are going to be coming to the district," he said.

At the high school, every part of the building will be affected by the renovations, according to Rountree.

"Not all of it will be reconstructed or renovated, but every part will be touched," he said. "It's just going to be fresh, it's going to be new."