Crews Break Ground On New Baxter Elementary School

Brainerd school board members, community leaders, students, and faculty alike gathered at the site of the future new Baxter Elementary School for a milestone in the Blueprint 181 Project. Crews broke ground on the first of 13 building projects that will be taking place throughout the Brainerd School District.

“It’s very exciting to think that over four years of work has gone into this. Today is the first groundbreaking of the first building,” said Brainerd Public Schools Superintendent Laine Larson.

Students, school board members, faculty, and city officials gathered to ring in the celebration and the official start to the District 181 building projects.

“It was a great day. We had literally hundreds of people here celebrating the start of really a new era for the school district,” said Brainerd Lakes Chamber President Matt Kilian.

The current Baxter Elementary School will be repurposed into an Early Childhood Education center and the new building will be designed to better fit the needs of the school and students.

“The impact that this new building will have on our staff and our students is just it will bring a wave of energy. It will allow for more teaming and more collaboration,” explained Baxter Elementary Principal Tammy Stellmach.

In the next few years, 13 buildings in the Brainerd School District will be remodeled or constructed. The building projects were approved by voters during a special election last year.

“It truly is a community partnership focused on education and focused on excellence and that’s what I see that the community has committed to and that’s what they’re going to recieve,” added Larson. ”Because that’s what our children deserve.”

Officials say that the building projects will not only benefit the students and the district, but the community of the Brainerd Lakes Area as a whole.

“When families want to come into the community they want to see the schools. They want to know that the community invests in kids,” explained Kilian. “So it made a lot of sense for the chamber to get behind it.”

Though the groundbreaking was a day of celebration, school officials, students, and faculty are eager for the projects to be complete.

“Right now this is such an exciting time, but there’s nothing like that time where you actually open the doors and you enter,” Larson said.

“Our mission at Baxter Elementary School is “We build foundations.” We are just excited to also literally be building a new foundation for our students,” Stellmach said.

Groundbreaking ceremonies will he held tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. at Harrison Elementary and Thursday at 9:20 a.m. at Nisswa Elementary.