As enrollment at Southside Elementary School reaches nearly 900 students, according to the Indiana Department of Education, plans to build a new elementary school on the west side of Columbus have been progressing. Darin Sprong, who is the current principal at W.D. Richards Elementary and future principal of the new elementary school, spoke about why the new school is needed.

“Southside is nearing 1,000 kids, which is not ideal for a new elementary school,” Sprong said.

Dr. Brett Boezeman, assistant superintendent and finance operations for BCSC, stated other motives for the new school.

“The decision to build a new elementary school in the west side of town allows us primarily to do other projects within the other buildings in opening up space,” Bozeman said. “It [building a new elementary school] allows us to do lots of other things in other schools, which people are excited about.”

Junior Lucy Bergman, who lives on the west side of town where the school will be built, explained what she thinks about building the new school.

“I think this new elementary school will be a great addition to the community,” Bergman said. “I think this school is being built to help with crowding and also give people who live far out in Tipton Lakes a closer elementary school to go to.”

Sprong explained how he became interested in becoming involved in the new school.

“The discussion of the new school and the design meetings were public, so I attended those meetings and was intrigued by the design,” Sprong said. “I have been a principal in BCSC for a number of years and was looking for a new challenge.”

Bozeman spoke about how the architects for the project were chosen.

“There were opportunities given to the community to listen to presentations given by four design architects, and Howler and Yoon was chosen out of these four,” Sprong said. “They are working with CSO Architects on the design of the school.”

Bozeman explained how the new elementary school will be part of a larger redistricting effort.

“We are interested in making corrections [to districting] across many schools just once. We don’t want to redistrict several times,” Bozeman said. “That frustrates people and confuses people. The community will be involved in that [the districting of the new school] starting in calendar year ‘26.”

Bozeman spoke about how students have been involved in the new school’s naming process.

“We have a DNF committee, which is the Districting and Facilities Committee, that meets quarterly,” Bozeman said. “The conversation was brought up there about how we could involve students in that process. We contacted the CSA schools, New Tech, Central, Fodra, and Lincoln, and we asked the kids to help us name the school.”

Bozeman noted that students, the public, and the school board have all had involvement in the naming process.

“They [the students] provided a whole list of 130 names that we then cleaned up to the 14 names that we offered the public for review and feedback,” Bozeman said. “We’ll spend the next few weeks working through that data, then bringing the recommendation to the DNF committee, and then to the school board. The school board will have a name for the school in the next few weeks.”