SHILOH TODAY ELEMENTARY GRAND OPENING By Dr. Keith McDaniel, Superintendent I t is with great joy that we can celebrate the completion of our new 62,000-square-foot Shiloh Christian Elementary School building and cafeteria. A new educational facility has been a dream for our leadership team, school board, and families of Shiloh. As our school has grown over the past six years, it became clear that we would have to simply remain the size that we were, or we would have to build. With rising construction costs and the new state law requiring a tornado shelter with any new educational facility construction, it was a significant undertaking and would require substantial financial backing. Once we decided to chase the dream of a brand new elementary building, I began with a conceptual drawing of what I thought it could be. It all started with a pencil drawing on a piece of printer paper in my office. Once I had a general idea of what I thought we needed, I ran the concept by our school board president, who liked our direction. After that, I traveled to several schools across multiple states to gather ideas and lessons learned. I connected those lessons and ideas with my original design and presented that information to MGA and Associates and O’Kelley Architecture, who made the drawing and ideas come to life. Once I had a strong floor plan and conceptual renderings, I reached out to some of our gracious donors with a heart for the school and shared our vision with them. Their incredible generosity and desire to further faith-based education in Northwest Arkansas allowed this project to get off the ground. Once we had the financial backing we needed to get serious about the project, so we hosted a “State of the School” night in January 2024. I shared our vision and my ambitious goal of starting the project in June of 2024 and completing the project by August 1, 2025. Our families rallied around the vision, and we pressed forward with the project. C.R. Crawford Construction Company audaciously stepped up to be the company to see us through to the finish line. Cody Crawford, John Teeter, and their team understood the vision, took the timeline head-on, and provided first-class service from beginning to end. Connor Shaw and Darian Gomillion served as the Project Manager and Site Supervisor for the construction of the elementary building. They handled the project 6 ELEMENTARY GRAND OPENING
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