Over 600 students begin at Karns City Area Elementary School
A few hundred students who attended Sugarcreek Elementary joined a few hundred more students who attended Chicora Elementary on Tuesday, Sept. 3, for the first day of Karns City Area School District’s new year, in a familiar, but different, building.
Construction recently ended on a new wing at Chicora Elementary School, which has 12 classrooms and a new cafeteria and kitchen. While work on a new gymnasium and music room continues, students from the recently closed Sugarcreek Elementary School were able to comfortably join students from Chicora Elementary School in the newly dubbed Karns City Area Elementary School.
“The students came in as normal; we had plenty of staff in place to help the children get to their classrooms,” superintendent Eric Ritzert said at the school Tuesday. “They got to enjoy the new cafeteria this morning.”
The project expanding the elementary school has been ongoing for years, with students being closer last year to the active construction on the new wing compared to the construction this year. The completion of the new wing of classrooms means the 640 students in kindergarten through sixth grade will have a stable home room this year, instead of having to move to different classrooms like last year, because of construction disruptions.
The school board voted to close Sugarcreek at a meeting near the end of last school year, and it was the second time the board voted to close the school, because of construction delays at what was then Chicora Elementary.
Armstrong School District built the original part of Sugarcreek Elementary in 1953 and completed an addition and renovation project in 1973. Karns City Area School District acquired the school in 1993, and classes started in 1994, when that area of Armstrong County became part of the school district.
Although Sugarcreek Elementary School is closed, the district did not let go of any staff in the transition.
Ritzert said the culmination of several years of construction and an estimated $25 million project turned out well, because of the staff of the elementary schools that helped with the transition.
“We're comfortable from a school operations standpoint,” Ritzert said. “Thank our staff — from our custodial, teachers, paraprofessional, the school police — pulling together to make this first day feasible and enjoyable for the children.”
