Marshall County Central Schools hosted a groundbreaking ceremony to officially kick off the start of its voter approved building project. Prior to the ceremony students in Viking had a schoolwide photo and heard from Superintendent Lund about the updates to Viking School. In Newfolden, the ceremony began at 1:00 p.m. All students and staff for grade 3-12 students, board members, community members, and representatives from Kraus Anderson and Widseth were in attendance. MCC Student Council provided all present with some ice cream sandwiches on the sunny day.
The ceremony began with the MCC Pep Band playing the school song. Junior Kaydence Augustine sang the national anthem. Superintendent Lund shared some remarks about the building project noting that it had been nearly 30 years since any construction had happened on the school buildings in Newfolden. The last time was 1994 when they tore the old highschool sections down attached to the elementary and remodeled a portion of the school. The last project in Viking was completed over 50 years ago in 1966. The new project will add much needed space to help support our students. The Viking project will be adding a new music room, kitchen storage, a staff bathroom, additional office space, and remodeling some spaces that will allow library space, dedicated special education space, a larger staff breakroom, and a nurses office/sick room. This summer the office space will be completed. The music room, kitchen office, and staff restroom will be completed and ready to use in January. The remaining items will be finished summer of 2024. The high school will be adding 5 classrooms, a kitchen and cafeteria, a secondary gym, a larger weight room allowing for a full team or full gym class to use, and will add additional parking. This summer work will focus on replacement of the high school loop, building a parking lot at the Newfolden Elementary site, and replacing the pavement on the basketball court at Newfolden Elementary. They will begin dirt work and putting up walls for the high school classroom addition and the north addition. This new construction will add much needed space eliminating the need for elementary students to cross the street for music and library and for high school students to cross the street for breakfast and lunch. As we take the first steps in this project we hope that it will meet the needs of the MCC community for the next 30 or more years.
School board chairperson Mark Knutson noted that we are making history for tomorrow today. Both Chairperson Knutson and Vice Chairperson Craig Bakke emphasized that our students our future and that it was important for the community to come together to support our students and staff. They noted it is important to have facilities that meet today's needs and provide room for future opportunities. Vice Chairperson Bakke noted that listening, working together, and coming to consensus through compromise helped the district get to this place and time.
A few students, a few staff members, Superintendent Lund, Board members, and representatives from KA and Widseth helped with the ceremonial groundbreaking. One of the students Garrett Barth was selected for raising over $900 dollars towards the project. His parents allowed him to have a sandwich stand and dad promised to match the funds he raised.
