Jackson school breaks ground on new building

From her office window, principal Tami Nenninger can see students lined up along the fence at recess watching as bulldozers and dump trucks clear away debris and grade dirt from the site of the old Immaculate Conception school building.

Four months after a tornado damaged the Jackson Catholic school, parishioners, parents and teachers gathered Wednesday for a thanksgiving Mass and a groundbreaking ceremony on the site where new construction will begin.

Bishop John J. Leibrecht of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau diocese splashed holy water on the ground after turning a shovel of dirt.

"We hope that what begins today will progress day by day to a blessed and successful completion," he said.

The parish can celebrate its blessings, the bishop said. The construction schedule and project is much farther ahead than Leibrecht had expected, he told those gathered.

The addition to the school will cost about $3.5 million, with $1 million covered through insurance. The additional money is being raised through pledges in the parish, Nenninger said.

Students are still leery of the tornado that struck Jackson May 6 and worried that another disaster might happen. Having the Mass and groundbreaking ceremony should help alleviate some of those fears, she said.

"Sometimes we don't always understand why things happen," Leibrecht told the students during Mass. "In May we had tornadoes and we don't know why that happened. What we do know is that God is there to help us with whatever is next."

Building an addition to the existing school is the next step for Immaculate Conception, the bishop said. "We are thankful that people are there to help for this year and are getting ready for the new building."

And though they won't enter the new building until next year, students have already been keeping tabs on the construction. Each day at recess, they line up at the edge of the parking lot/playground area and watch the excavation crews at work.

The site where they stood during the outdoor ceremony Wednesday will become classrooms when the space is completed.

The transition from the old building to the modular classrooms has actually been easier than expected, Nenninger said. Students and staff have adapted well to some tight quarters.

The transition "has gone surprisingly well," said Diana Schreiner, whose son, Cole, is in second grade at the school. Her son will have attended school in all the buildings before he graduates eighth grade, she said. He began kindergarten in the old building, which had to be demolished because of structural damage from the tornado, and is now in classrooms in the new school that was dedicated in 2002. Next year, his class will move to the addition.

Schreiner has had mixed emotions about the construction project. She attended school in the old building and was sad to see it torn down.

"But there's been a lot of excitement" as the work progresses, she said.

As a third grade class walked from the mobile unit across the street to the parish center for gym, the students watched crews installing a water main at Ohio and Madison streets.

"It's fun to watch when you get up close to the excavator," said Cole Ross, a third-grader.

Construction on the building, which will add about 25,000 square feet of classroom space and a 24,000-square-foot gymnasium, should be complete by late August or September.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126