St. Malachy breaks ground on new building project

With one quick flick of a shovel Wednesday morning, Bishop Richard Pates ceremoniously broke ground on St. Malachy School’s new building project.

Pates, along with St. Malachy Principal Jennifer Simmons, Father Ken Halbur and members of the construction crew that will work on the new building lined up and donned hard hats as they broke ground during a ceremony Wednesday morning at the school.

“It’s been really good just having the experience of having the bishop down here to help us do a blessing and do Mass with us, but it’s also just great for all those who have been very helpful and supportive of getting this project underway,” Halbur said.

The $1.3 million project includes construction of a new building on the St. Malachy campus that will house two preschool classrooms, an additional classroom that will serve multiple purposes and a new music classroom.

Both preschool classrooms in the new building will be safe rooms able to hold all students and staff.

In addition, once the new building is complete, the entire St. Malachy campus will be connected by one hallway, meaning students will no longer have to go outside to change classrooms.

“Our enrollment has been increasing over the last five years,” Simmons said. “We are increasing the amount of class options we have for preschool. So, we will increase about another 50 students next year.”

Simmons said she and Halbur have been discussing the project since she first came to the school several years ago, but plans finally started to come together last winter.

Of the $1.3 million needed to fund the project, $350,000 came from a grant, while the remainder of the total was completed by the school’s fundraising efforts throughout the community.

“The plan is to begin actual construction first of April, and it’s projected to be done mid to late September,” Simmons said. “It’s after the start of the school year, but we have two classrooms we can modify until the new building is ready.”

Halbur said currently the school’s preschool program is all in one classroom, with another room for meetings.

“Having the two classrooms, having separate bathrooms for themselves, and just a lot of extra space for them will be nice,” Halbur said. “They’ll have a little kitchenette so they can learn to make cookies and things like that. We’re looking at a pretty sizable increase for our preschool next year.”

While the additional space will be a big benefit for the school, Simmons said one of the biggest reasons for the new building is safety.

“I think the biggest thing it will do for our school is provide a safe option for our students and their families, because we’ll all be interconnected,” she said. “Kids won’t have to go outside to go to music or go outside to switch classes. We’ll have a safe shelter. But it also provides us an option to bring many more students into our building in our preschool program and build that way.”

St. Malachy School has been open for 148 years. Halbur said one of his favorite statistics is Ulysses S. Grant was president when the school opened, and there were only 37 states in the Union.

“We’ve been here a long time – one year after Creston started as a town,” Halbur said. “So we hope to be here for another 148 years.”