Dove Creek’s new elementary school, which is set to open its doors in August 2024, has started the first phase of construction.
“We’re in the middle of dirt work right now,” Superintendent Ty Gray said. Construction crews are working on preparing the ground to prep for footers and concrete, and Gray said that as of right now, the school building is on schedule to be completed in fall 2024.
“We’re hoping to have concrete completed here by the middle of August, and they’re looking at steel starting to go up in September,” Gray said.
Before school starts in August, they hope to get some of the bigger aspects of building out of the way, such as the gas line, digging for utilities, sewer and waterline.
“It’s looking good right now,” he added. “We’ve tried to stay ahead of the game.”
They’ve also started working with Empire Electric Association to begin the prep work for running electric lines into the building.
The new elementary school has been years in the making, starting in 2019 when the Dove Creek school district first applied for the BEST grant. Their interview with the grant board was right around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the grant ended up going to another school that year.
“We were told to shoot for the stars and ask for everything we wanted,” Gray said. “We did too much, so a little bad advice there.”
A little over a year ago in 2022, they applied for the grant again with more of an idea of what they needed for their school.
“We asked specifically for the elementary school, just what we needed,” he said. “That’s what the community wanted too. They didn’t want to spend money on other things, just what was needed, so we just went for the elementary school this time. We were successful.”
The school was granted $12.6 million from BEST through the capital construction program of the Colorado Department of Education.
They also went through a bond in November 2022 which provided the rest of the money needed to build the school, bringing the school building budget to $22.9 million. The bond provided $10.3 million.
The official groundbreaking was held in May with community, student, parent and teacher support.
August 2024 is when phase one of the project will be completed, and phase two will be the demolition of the current elementary school to make way for a parking lot and playground for the new school.
The building will house a classroom for each grade – pre-K through fifth grade – and will include a special education classroom, music, art and a children’s library. The school will also house district offices.
Another part of the project that Gray shared is the demolition of the old high school and a “face-lift” on Memorial Hall. Gray emphasized that Memorial Hall was not being demolished with the old high school, but would receive some updates.
