Saxony Lutheran hopes to break ground on new ag building in spring

Saxony Lutheran High School in Jackson recently announced it soon will begin construction on a new building on its campus.

According to Saxony Lutheran principal Mark Ruark, the need for a new building stems from the school adding agriculture science and a Future Farmers of America (FFA) program in 2014.

"In the 2014-15 school year, we added an agriculture science FFA program to our school's curriculum and activities," Ruark said. "Since that time, they've operated out of a regular classroom, and any time they wanted to do any shop-like activities such as welding or any of those things that are part of a regular agriculture science program, we had to go off-campus to do it.

"We have about 35 to 40 students involved in our ag science FFA program, and we did a strategic plan in 2016-17 and several needs came out of that."

The school has raised enough money through a capital campaign to entirely fund the $1.5 million to $1.7 million project and hopes to break ground in the coming months.

"Hopefully, we'll put the shovel in the ground here in the late spring and, by this time next year, be using that as an active facility," Ruark said.

Saxony Lutheran's capital campaign began during the 2016-17 school year after identifying several needs during its strategic planning. School officials had hoped to raise enough money to construct the new building and complete the additional projects — adding a second gym, an auditorium and additional classrooms to the existing building — at the same time. However, their efforts were slowed down significantly because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

"We were in the process of doing a capital campaign and raising the money to build all of this as one project," Ruark said, "and then, of course, COVID hit, building materials skyrocketed and it really set our campaign back a couple of years. We just completed this recent strategic plan that was approved by our Board of Regents in October, and one of the priorities that came out of that was to continue with the fundraising and the building plan but to do it in phases."

The first phase of the plan is to construct the new building — which will also serve as a storm shelter — for the agriculture science program, while the second and third phases will pay for the second gym, six additional classrooms and the auditorium. However, Ruark said the school has raised enough money to begin construction of the ag sciences building but continues to raise funds for the other projects.

"That fundraising still continues, but we do believe that we have the funds raised to build this building without having to go into debt, which is important to our Board of Regents," Ruark said.

According to Ruark, the initial fundraising goal was $10 million, which would cover the costs of all the building projects as well as eliminate $2.5 million in debt the school had built up and $2 million to go toward annual operations. The cost of the project has since increased from approximately $6 million-$7 million to approximately $15 million.

"That's why we decided to do it in phases," Ruark said. "We have raised, in terms of actual cash on hand, we have over $2 million in our construction fund in the bank, and then we have another $2.5 million pledged."

The school looks to begin the project in March, and has an estimated construction timeline of six to nine months, depending on the weather.

"We are in the process of getting our request for qualifications, and we're going to give that to some contractors," Ruark said. "We'll have a period of time for them to respond to our (request for quote), and then we hope to select a contractor in March with our March Board of Regents meeting."

Ruark said he is thankful for the donations the capital campaign has received so far and reiterated the importance of these projects to Saxony Lutheran's students.

"We feel that these are not luxury items. These are real needs that we have. But we also think it will allow us to serve our students better, and that's why it's important," Ruark said. "There's a safety aspect to it as well with the storm shelter and improved security features. I feel like my No. 1 job as principal is to make sure our students and staff are safe."