USD 372 Silver Lake holds ribbon cutting for new offices and renovations

SILVER LAKE, Kan. (WIBW) - Silver Lake Unified School District (USD) 372 held a ribbon cutting on Tuesday to commemorate its new district offices and renovations.

Officials announced USD 372 has new district offices at 400 E. Pottawatomie St. in Silver Lake and the Greater Topeka Partnership was on site to celebrate with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

According to officials, the newly renovated building was just shy of $1.5 million. Superintendent Brad Womack of Silver Lake USD 372 says the big difference between the newly renovated building and the previous offices is a training room or meeting room for staff members and a board room for the school board.

“It centralizes all of our administrative services for running the district, No. 1,” Womack said. “No. 2, it brings an old building that has been here since 1954 back to life where it stood basically as a storage building for the last 15 years for the most part and the namesake on the building is impactful to this community.”

This new building also pays tribute to the district’s first superintendent, Paul Snavley, as officials named the new facility the Snavley Education Center. Womack believes Snavley left a lasting impact on the students he looked after and on the community he served for several years.

”Mr. Snavley was our first superintendent of schools here in the mid-to-late 1960s, had a profound impact on a lot of students who came through,” Womack said. “He was the first principal to work in this building. Again, he wasn’t just impactful to the school, he was impactful to the entire community.”

Superintendent Womack also sees this change as an opportunity to expand or add programs in the offices recently vacated by the district.

“I think the big thing [the public] will see is the opportunity for us to expand some programs in the different buildings because we vacated space,” said Womack. “Those elementary, and junior/senior high school buildings have a little bit of space where we are now looking at what are the next programs that we want to either add or expand on.”

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