Community leaders gathered in Baldwin County Wednesday to cut the ribbon on the new and innovative Silverhill Elementary School.
The $30 million campus replaced the 1956 school that housed just under 500 students, K through 6.
Baldwin County Public Schools superintendent Eddie Tyler presided over the ceremony and cut the yellow ribbon. He later posed a thought-provoking question:
“Since 2015, we have built 11 brand-new schools and done 20 expansions. The total cost was $600 million. We did it with zero new taxes. I’d like to know somewhere else that is going on.”
No one took the bait and challenged the assertion.
Last Friday, the students, teachers and staff went their last day at the old 1956 campus. Over the weekend, teachers and staff moved from the old into the new.
Usually, new schools open at the start of a new school year in August. Tyler remarked: “I wasn’t going to have a $30 million school empty for five or six months, so we gambled on a midyear move, and it worked out,” Tyler said. Students and teachers seemed already to be right at home in the 137,361 square foot state-of-the-art campus.
And it is a campus. A storm shelter was incorporated into the classroom wing. There are 56 classrooms, two pre-K classrooms, two STEM classrooms (Science, technology, engineering, and math), and six special needs classrooms. There is a cafeteria and kitchen for 480 students, a gymnasium that looks like a large high school gym and seats 580, a choral room, a band room, a media center (formerly called a library), a security camera for the entire campus, and a covered car drop-off for cars and buses.
The new school cost Baldwin County taxpayers $29,665,714. It sits on 73 acres of prime Baldwin County land, which “ain’t cheap.”
The original Silverhill Elementary School was built in 1898. The one vacated last week was built in 1956.
Baldwin County and Silverhill have grown dramatically in the 70 years since 1956.
The school system is anticipating continued growth in the area, so the school did not start near capacity on day one. There are vacant classrooms at the moment, but they will fill up as new families start in the area or move there.
School principal Wendy Rodgers said, “The technology, the size of the gym, the STEM classrooms, the seating in the cafeteria, this is all things that we never had before.”
Rogers toured the campus with community leaders, county and city officials, school board members, parents and the media.
While the staff, teachers, students and alumni have loving memories of the old 1956 school vacated over the weekend, it will not go unused. It will be revamped and used by the school system.
The slogan of the school is: “GREAT Happens Here.”
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at ZeiglerElderCare@yahoo.com.
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