This week, Wilder Elementary Principal Andrea Hangen led what she described as the “most exciting storm drill that will ever happen.”
At the appointed time, classroom teachers led 325 students through the halls to the northeastern part of the building. There, they entered the new gym — which doubles as a storm shelter — for the first time.
“We were able to come together as a school family in here for the first time,” she said Thursday. “We had a scheduled storm drill the first day that we could be in here. It went fantastic.”
Hangen spoke Tuesday at the second of four back-to-back ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new elementary gym storm shelters, all paid for by the $220 million bond issue approved in April 2023 .
The ceremony for Mann was in late August. Watkins and Pittman were up next. Construction of storm shelter gyms at Cowden and Holland is ongoing.
Wilder was a pivotal project because the campus will also soon add classrooms to absorb roughly half the elementary students zoned to attend Pershing, a K-8 campus that will be transformed into a middle school. The other half will go to Field Elementary.