ELLSWORTH — The Ellsworth High and Middle Schools opened their doors Sept. 24, unveiling the completed referendum projects to the public during a ribbon cutting.

It has been a long process since the public approved a $25 million facilities referendum in April 2024, but they had their chance to see what came out of the investment.

The high school saw more building-altering changes than the middle school, including an extension to the south entryway, a fitness center, a size increase as well as improvements to the career and technical education (CTE) spaces, a commercial kitchen and coffee roaster for consumer science courses, an improved school store and many other facelift-type alterations.

“These improvements are a lot more than updates to our building look. They are an investment in our students, they are an investment in our staff and they are an investment in our community,” High School Principal Marcy Burch said, “Our students are already very much invested in, and actively taking ownership of the spaces. They understand that without the support of many, this wouldn’t be possible.”

The message multiple district representatives gave to back the changes at the schools was the increased opportunities for collaboration. With the way the spaces are now designed to open up to each other, business classes can do projects alongside CTE classes and agriculture classes, etc.

“There is a lot of responsibility that comes with this, and we’re excited to tackle it,” Superintendent Brian Nadeau said.

Village President Becky Beissel spoke at the ribbon cutting. She discussed how she went to Ellsworth and graduated thinking she wanted to be an architect. After graduating, she eventually went into marketing. With more opportunities at the school, Beissel said students can narrow down the field they want to get into before graduating.

“Our kids don’t just get a taste of a subject anymore. They get real opportunities to explore career paths, find out their interests and discover if it’s the right fit, even before they graduate,” Beissel said. “These classrooms, labs and hands-on experiences open doors in ways that many of us never had the chance to walk through.”

Beissel also emphasized the importance of focusing on the trades, fields that she said are continuously in high demand.

Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Kim Beebe said many students who pass through the school will go on to be future business and community leaders in Ellsworth.

“Strong schools make for strong communities,” Beebe said. “A lot of new families are coming to town, and you can bet they looked at the schools before making the decision to come here. Education and business are not separate… Education and business fuel each other.”

The largest change at the middle school was turning the tall, row-style locker bays into open collaboration workspaces with lockers on the perimeter.

“This is the most recent in a series of very exciting days for our building,” EMS Principal Olin Morrison said. “From the day that we first started talking about our referendum and the changes that we might be looking at, to the date that our community voted to pass the referendum, to the date that we broke ground, to all the dates across the summer and when we first had students in and got to see their reactions to the new spaces and now being able to invite the community in, this has been a very exciting process. The changes that have happened here, if I can just sum them up, they fit the direction that we are going.”

Morrison said with a mission of student learning, collaboration creates opportunity. He mentioned he has already seen collaboration between classes in these spaces.

The science rooms were also changed from the previous style of classroom desks on one side of the room and labs on the other to dual-purpose high tables that serve both purposes.

Both the high school and middle school also got utility upgrades as well as lighting, grinded down flooring to avoid the previously necessary annual waxing and paint jobs that now align with the school colors.

“In terms of dollars, it’s a big investment, and we’re incredibly thankful to the community for doing that,” Morrison said. “In terms of bang for the buck, to get ahead of these long-term facilities cost with our HVAC system, with our flooring that is now lower maintenance flooring, with our lighting that is now higher efficiency lighting, and to get a building that more accurately reflects how we plan to teach students in our classrooms is a massive bang for the buck investment.”