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Henrietta Wildsmith | Hattiesburg American Susan Stevens, art teacher at Sacred Heart Elementary School, helps Ella Smith get acquainted with of her classmates on the first day of school. School sacrifices for progress By JILLIAN KRAMER More classrooms and a new cafeteria will mean fewer holiday breaks for students at one Pine Belt school. Sacred Heart Catholic School, which started its school year Monday, welcomed students into 15 new classrooms, a new cafeteria building, chemistry lab, library and more. The price? More than $4 million in construction costs, a delayed start to the school year and fewer holidays for students. But Principal Maribeth Andereck said it's all worth it. "I didn't think we would do as much as we did, but now we won't have to do it (renovations) for years and years," she said. For this year only, students will have to attend school on some holidays - like Labor Day, and will only have a week-and-a-half break at Christmas, as opposed to a full two weeks off, in order to finish the school year in May, Andereck said. The decision to sacrifice holidays was a nearly unanimous one, said board member the Rev. Ken Ramon-Landry, priest at Sacred Heart. Parents were notified through phone calls and letters of the changes to the buildings, as well as the school year, he said. Jeannie Munn, whose 12-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, attends Sacred Heart, said she was not notified until the end of July that school would not resume Aug. 10, but rather, it would begin Labor Day. "I wish we had known sooner in the summer," she said, "But on another note, I think Labor Day to Memorial Day is the way to go." And the skipped holidays, Munn said, are no big deal. "We went to school on holidays when I was growing up," she said. "And we survived." Munn added she was extremely impressed with the renovations made to the school, especially the addition of a new, modular high school building placed in the center of campus. "To know she (Munn's daughter) will be in this one building all day ... it's clean, it's fresh," she said. "It's just a fabulous new building." The school and its 10-member board hired Finlo Construction for the renovations. The construction company gutted the elementary school, adding classrooms, science labs and a 3,400-square-foot cafeteria and built the high school building - completing a 10-year vision for the school, Ramon-Landry said. "All that was left of our old three-story school were the walls," Ramon-Landry said. "It's basically a new school." The renovations weren't cheap. "A little over a year ago, we began the campaign to raise the funds to make our vision a reality," he said. "And we did that with much success." The school raised approximately $4.6 million in pledges, Ramon-Landry said, with $4.1 million specifically allocated for renovations and additions to the school. The renovations and additions were necessary, Ramon-Landry said, to accommodate the school's recently-added high school population. Seniors graduated for the first time in 41 years from the school last year. "Once we realized the high school was something people wanted, we asked how we could house that program in our current structure," Ramon-Landry said. "The answer was we couldn't." |