PEORIA — Shovels hit the dirt and confetti fell from the air Friday in Peoria as students and staff at Wilder-Waite Elementary School celebrated the groundbreaking on construction of their new school building.
Students, staff, architects and other project workers were equally elated to celebrate the groundbreaking of an elementary school in the Dunlap School District that will help alleviate overcrowding in other buildings in the district.
An emotional Stacy Berg, the principal of the school, said the students who have walked the halls in the decades-old current building have “built friendships, learned lifelong skills and left our mark on this school.”
“Wilder-Waite is not just a building, it’s a home, it’s a legacy and a community that lives in each and every one of us,” Berg said. “Today as we stand upon something new, we feel excitement and deep gratitude. Excitement for the opportunities ahead and gratitude for all of the memories, relationships and moments that have shaped us and will stay with us forever.”
When will the Dunlap School District’s new elementary school be completed?
The new Wilder-Waite Elementary School will be open for the 2027-2028 school year, Dunlap School District Superintendent Scott Dearman said.
As of Friday, heavy machines had already cleared the plot of land the new building will rest on, which sits behind the current school building located at 10021 N. Pacific Street in Peoria. The location is within Peoria city limits but is within the Dunlap district.
The current building, Dearman said, will be kept and used by the district to house some offices and the district’s special education program.
“This is the culmination of many, many years of conversation and collaboration to try and get this project off the ground, so we’re super excited that we’re finally crossing the finish line, breaking ground and getting this school built,” Dearman said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Talks for a new elementary school in the Dunlap School District first began about 12 years ago, Dearman said, but it wasn’t until about two and a half years ago when ideas really started gaining traction.
How much will Dunlap’s new elementary school cost?
The cost for the new elementary school will be around $38 million, Dearman said, almost $5 million less than the original cost projection of $42.9 million. Dearman said bids for the project came in better than expected.
The new building will be two-stories tall and roughly 80,000 square feet. The larger building will house a maximum of 700 students, Dearman said, but it will open with around 600. The current school houses only 350.
Dearman said it will offer more space, better air conditioning, a more accessible cafeteria and better Wi-Fi, among other amenity upgrades over the old building.
“We’re overcrowded in a lot of buildings, so a lot of those classrooms (in the old building) will be repurposed for office space, individual meeting spaces, conference rooms, those kinds of things,” Dearman said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations about how we can use it, nothing real concrete yet other than we’re going to take some people that are in mobile trailers behind Dunlap Middle, our special ed department is out there, so we’re going to move them into a physical building.”
Dearman, too, said that traffic access to the new school building should be easier and will prevent car backups from extending into nearby neighborhoods.
The original school building is more than 70 years old and is built on land donated to the district by Holly Wilder-Waite.
“She generously donated the land so our children could have a place to learn, grow and belong,” Berg said Friday. “What an amazing gift.”
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: New $38M Dunlap elementary school will allow for more students
Reporting by JJ Bullock, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
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