After the rebuilding of the Aurora School a decade ago went over budget and was left unfinished, the community has been looking for a way to complete the project.
They broke ground on the new additions, for the second time, Tuesday.
It began in 1993, residents said, when the Aurora school burned to the ground. Emergency state funds helped them rebuild it, but when the project started getting too expensive, plans were scaled back.
"The public actually witnessed a promise that was broken," said Preston County schools superintendent Larry Parsons. "Dozers came in and soiled over the foundation blocks and its left a real hurt in this community for several years."
The school was originally designed to house students from kindergarten through eighth grade, but after the school was forced to scale back there was not enough room for the seventh and eighth graders. Since then, they've been split up and bused to Terra Alta or Tucker County for school.
For residents like Arvin Harsh, 80, the $1.5 million project is about more than just the new classrooms for music, art, and technology. It's about building for the future of the Aurora community.
Harsh was one of the driving forces behind the completion of the project, and it was an emotional day for him, though a happy one.
"Now their promise will be kept," Parsons said. "Actually, the classrooms will be on the old foundations that were years ago put in place so this is a happy day for this community and I'm real happy for the people here who believed that they could actually have the school that they deserve."
The seventh and eighth grade students will be back in Aurora, in their school, this fall.
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