INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Due to a surge in enrollment, the Independence School District had to use mobile trailers as classrooms to tackle overcrowding. But thanks to a $38 million bond, students will soon get to move into a brand new elementary school with upgrades and more space.
Within the past 10 years, roughly 1,500 new students have joined the district.
Some of those students will soon get to move into the brand new Cassell Park Elementary School.
District leaders are calling it a "high technology, high collaboration" elementary school.
"Throughout the Independence School District, we've seen significant enrollment, especially in the western part of our school district, so to combat some of the overcrowding issues, we decided to build our 20th elementary school," Independence School District Superintendent Dr. Dale Herl said. "What a great thing for the community and for the kids. This will allow us to do away with all of the mobile trailers within the ISD."
There are several unique features within the building and classrooms.
"You can see extremely wide hallways and learning spaces within the hallways, so if you want to take a student out for some extra help, you can certainly do that to increase some of the instruction," Herl said. "We have a lot of technology in the classrooms: We have wireless speaker systems for the teachers, so they have a lapel mic that they can put on so the kids can always hear the teacher no matter what, and there's lots of storage in the classroom."
Chrome books for all students will also be provided during their instruction in the classroom.
A new media center has also been added, which includes a space for Project Lead the Way.
"Project Lead the Way is a STEM education system that they've had in high school for many years, but now we've moved it down into the elementary school," Herl said. "We wanted to bring it down to our elementary schools to get elementary students interested in the engineering and math fields and what better way to do that than to bring it to the elementary schools."
The school also has an early education space that has two classrooms for young learners between the ages of 3 and 5.
"One of our big focuses here in the Independence School District is to expand our early education," Herl said. "By first of all building the elementary school, we were able to get rid of the mobile trailers, but also open up space at other elementary schools for early education. Here at Cassell Park, we were in the design phase and able to add to early education rooms within the elementary school."
The Cassell Park ribbon cutting and open house is 5 p.m. today. It is located at 10401 E. 31st St. in Independence.
Cassell Park will open up for summer school on May 29th.
