Last month, shortly before the school year started, SSD welcomed people to the newly renovated and modernized Ellis Elementary School campus.
Teachers, students, families, administrators, and elected officials joined District staff in a ribbon cutting and celebration of a job well done. Speakers, including Ellis Principal Stephanie Fischer and Superintendent Michael Gallagher, praised the care and respect partners like Sausal Corporation, the general contractor, and Aedis Architects brought to their work every day and thanked students, families, and the surrounding community for their patience during the 4 years of construction.
The resulting school features a new multipurpose room, classrooms with natural lighting, a new kindergarten wing, and 100 new trees. Thanks to its energy-efficient design, technology, and more than 400 solar panels, the new Ellis school consumes very little energy—it is virtually a net-zero campus. “There were 100 reasons this project could have failed: COVID, supply chain issues … but I’m proud we hit every single milestone and created an optimal educational environment,” said Brandt Burns, SSD Director of Facilities and Operations.
While every speaker spoke glowingly of the Ellis renovation team, none of them said they would actually miss the construction activities, although Burns did mention he enjoyed seeing “awe on faces when a classroom flies across the sky on a crane.”
Upgrades and maintenance of our facilities are made possible through the community’s support of school bond measures. Thank you for supporting the 2018 Measure GG, which funded the modernization of Ellis School!
