Caseyville Students Thank Workers With Lunch for Building Their New School
Date Posted: September 19, 2023
Posted In: News, Projects,
From The Edwardsville Intelligencer: Eight months after the official groundbreaking for the new Caseyville Elementary School, the new learning facility is approximately 30% complete.
As part of Construction Appreciation Week, sponsored in part by the Caseyville Public Library, Caseyville students thanked the construction workers with boxed lunches from Firehouse Subs on Thursday.
In addition, many students dressed like construction workers, wearing hard hats, T-shirts and jeans. Some kids even had lights on their hard hats like miners and brought toy tool kits to lunch.
Two groups of students brought their lunches out to sit with the workers under the current school’s two large shade trees. The weather for an impromptu picnic was near-perfect — sunny, light winds and mild temperatures.
This is the first all-new school building for the Collinsville school district since 2003 when the middle school opened. District officials said building a new school for the Caseyville community addresses demographic trends and essential infrastructure updates that would have been required to make the old building compliant with modern-day learning.
The new school will cost approximately $20 million.
On a schedule
Principal Chelsea Clark said construction since late 2022 has posed different challenges and forced faculty, staff, parents and students to all make adjustments in their habits.
During the district’s winter break in 2022, construction crews fenced off the area behind the existing school and the land between the school and the Caseyville Public Library to the north of the school. Since the fence went up, earthwork and grading has begun.