A Friday ribbon-cutting will mark the end of 20 months of construction at Legacy Elementary School, the district’s first new school since 1985.
SAN ANTONIO — Legacy Elementary School will welcome its first cohort of Uvalde CISD students and teacher in just two weeks, marking a major step for a community still mourning in the aftermath of the May 24, 2022, mass shooting at another district school.
Nineteen young students and two teachers were killed when a gunman entered Robb Elementary School that morning. He was in the building for 77 minutes before law enforcement neutralized the shooter, in a response now widely considered a failure on the part of those who were leading police during the active emergency.
No classes have been held at Robb since that day. Instead, the Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation – created in the wake of the tragedy – has led the planning efforts for a new campus: Legacy Elementary School, which was designed with features honoring victims of the mass shooting.
At 116,000 square feet, Legacy is nearly twice as big as Robb and also incorporates upgraded security features like keyless entry points, 9-foot-tall privacy gates, a secure waiting area for visitors and a road for first responders to have easy access to the school. Uvalde CISD trustees approved blueprints for the school in the spring of 2023 and construction began in February 2024 as the foundation continued raising money to fund it.
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On Friday, the foundation says, months of construction will be capped by a ribbon-cutting ceremony before Legacy’s first classes get underway Oct. 20. It has the capacity to accommodate up to 800 third, fourth and fifth graders.
“We appreciate the generosity of the hundreds of individuals, businesses, foundations and other organizations that contributed the monetary and in-kind donations that have made Legacy Elementary School a reality,” Tim Miller, the foundation’s executive director, said in a release.
More than $60 million has been raised so far for the project. The foundation says it’s secured all the money needed to finish the school.