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From local law enforcement to local health officials and more, many gathered at the site of 1900 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the late morning hours of Tuesday, May 21. 

They were there to celebrate a hope years in the making having come to fruition. 

During a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house, individuals celebrated the new Clark County Preschool building, which opened to students in February of this year. 

“This is a very, very long time coming for our community, for our staff, for our kids, [and] for our parents,” said Dustin Howard, Clark County Public Schools Superintendent. “We’ve dreamed about this since the time I joined the district way back in [the early 2000’s] and we’re here to celebrate.” 

Among the numerous individuals present for the ceremony was Brian Buckner, a senior project architect with RossTarrant Architects. 

He talked about the project’s development, as well as collaborating with local professionals. 

“We worked on the design primarily through 2021, right after COVID, and construction started [in] late 2022 [or] early 2023, so it’s about a two-year [construction] process,” he said. “We had lots of meetings very early on to talk about…what the issues were at the other facility and how we wanted to change that going forward…it was definitely an honor, and definitely one of the more successful processes we’ve had working with a group.” 

The new Clark County Preschool facility features several boastworthy items – including 23 classrooms distributed across four district learning communities, a pair of early childhood playgrounds, and media center with a forest themed design. 

Impressively, they also have four resource rooms as well as a sensory room designed to provide a distraction-free environment for occupational, physical, and speech-language therapies. 

A storm shelter dedicated to providing a safe and secure environment for young learners is also present. 

“Our storm shelter holds a capacity of 450 people, all the students in the building. It is rated for an EF5 tornado [and] it has [a] twelve-inch poured ceiling and the walls are cinder blocks with poured concrete inside of them,” said Brandi Faulkner, a teacher and team lead. “All of the classrooms have storm doors that we shut in the event of…severe weather.” 

As individuals from the community made their way throughout the building, exploring all that it has to offer, Clark County Preschool Principal Jill Blanton spoke. 

“I have been in the district for 17 years and I have served on three facilities committees, so it was very, very heartfelt for me,” she said. “I got a little emotional when I was speaking just because I know how hard we have advocated for this building and for early childhood education.” 

With the facility helping to open the door for sixty additional students to attend Clark County Preschool, the future seems bright. 

“We have a state-of-the-art building that is going to bring a lot of districts that are surrounding [us] to our district to see what’s taking place here,” Blanton said.