With rousing applause, the ribbon was cut on the new high school building for Summit Charter School on Friday morning, Aug. 23.
Head of School Kurt Pusch, speaking before the crowd, marveled at the fact that it’d been not even a full year since they broke ground on the new building, calling it an “exceptional feat, or maybe a miracle.”
He praised the “shared dream of the future” of the school, and said he appreciated the “deep sense of pride” in the community surrounding the school. He added that this year’s class at Summit Charter School had 322 students, which was the largest enrollment in the school’s history. He said there had been a 37% increase in enrollment over the past five years.
The new building will be 15,000 square feet of space for the students, which officials said would accommodate a growing population and more students in years to come. The new building features new classrooms, a science lab, a learning kitchen, a large commons area and individual learning rooms.
Pusch has said that the benefit of a new high school is that it will be separate from the K-8 campus, but will still be connected enough with the larger school.
Pusch said the Charter School was doing its best to keep its old identity and “maintain the small class sizes and identity distinctive to Summit Charter School.”
“You are the center of why we are here,” he said, addressing the students in attendance. “You deserve everything this campus will open up in your education and future challenge to take ownership and leave it better for the students who follow.”
The next speaker was Josh Crawford, a former chair of the Summit Charter School Foundation who has been deeply entrenched in the community for years. Crawford engaged in playful in-jokes with people in the crowd who he’s known around the community.
He talked about the lemonade stand his daughter started in 2015 which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the school. He said that had been an “incredible 10-year journey,” and had fond words for how the money his daughter raised had helped the school.
He had special praise for Summit Charter School Development Director Melissa Hudson, who he said had been a constant force at work pulling everyone together to help make the new school and get everything exactly as it had to be.
Then, he shifted his speech to address the rest of the community.
“I have one request for the kids,” he said. “Shut down bullying – it needs to end right now. Study a little harder for that ‘A.’ I don’t care if you don’t get it, but just give it your all.”
Then, addressing parents in the crowd, he implored them to get other parents involved if they saw people who weren’t doing as much as they could.
“If you know a parent not here, I want you to encourage every single parent to get engaged,” he said. “This is the community. The only way to do it is to come together as one. Just because the doors are open doesn’t mean the work is done.”
Adding that the school was built “for the children of today and the Cashiers of tomorrow,” he also told everyone to open the gifts they’d given out, which turned out to be dozens of olive-green school T-shirts. Everyone donned the shirts and gathered behind the ribbon to cut it. After the ribbon was sufficiently cut, people went inside the school and admired the spotless new facilities.