By Tyler Dahlgren

Walthill students started spilling out of their old school on the hill around 1:15 last Thursday, taking various routes to the corner where 2nd Ave runs into Broughton Street.

There they gathered, at the edge of town around a massive pile of dirt, for a groundbreaking ceremony that was several years in the making.

“It’s been forever coming,” superintendent Seth Sackmann said. “Our elementary school is 120 years old. As long as I’ve been here, everyone I’ve ever talked to has said, ‘We know we need a new school. It’s coming. It’s been promised to us. It’s coming.’ Well, we’re finally here, which is just so cool.”

Throughout the seven years he’s worked for Walthill Public Schools, and increasingly so in the last two as superintendent, Sackmann has envisioned this moment a million times over. He spent 15 minutes before the ceremony commenced greeting community members, media and special guests who’d made their way to the heart of the Omaha Reservation. Then he took the microphone, eight sets of shovels and hardhats serving as the scene’s background.

“This is more than a ceremony,” he told the crowd of a couple hundred. “This is a milestone.”

To say Walthill is overdue for a new building would be an understatement. Its current campus ran 50 years or so over its shelf life. But the Bluejays made it work, and last Thursday, as they gathered to celebrate the new 68 million dollar, state-of-the-art school, which they were able to pull off without a bond issue, there was nothing but gratefulness, hope and sheer excitement in the air.

“This building would not be possible without a massive community of people,” said Sackmann, who used his first five minutes or so simply saying thank you to donors, school board members, the community, the architects and the construction team who will eventually bring the blueprints to life. “The Sherwood Foundation has been huge for us. Same with the William and Ruth Scott Family Foundation, the Don C. Scott Family Foundation, the Claire M. Hubbard Foundation and the Lozier Foundation. They’ve all given millions of dollars. None of this would be possible without them.”

There have been so many others who’ve played a part along this journey, Sackmann pointed out. And though there was quite a wait leading up to this day, he feels the district caught lightning in a bottle with what it was able to accomplish. The new school, judging by the blueprint plans, is going to stand tall as a beacon of education in this area for a long, long time.

“We gather here today not just to mark a new beginning, but to give purpose to it,” said Chance Childers, who was elected to the Walthill Board of Education in 2024. 

Childers, the ceremony’s second speaker, continued his message.

“We choose to build, not to replace identity, but to restore it, not to ask our students to leave who they are behind, but to ensure that they never have to. Not simply to provide access to education, but to create a place where our belonging is unquestioned. This campus will not just be a structure. It will be a statement that education can honor culture, that it can strengthen rather than diminish, that it can prepare students for the future without separating them from their past or their identities.”

This year’s freshmen, the Walthill Class of 2029, will be the first graduating class in the new building once construction is completed. Sackmann and the WPS administrative team interviewed a handful of them earlier in the morning. As expected, there’s tons of excitement for what’s to come. There’s also a hint of something bittersweet about turning the page.

“They’ve had siblings, parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and great grandparents walk those halls,” Sackmann said. “There’s a lot to unpack, and there’s definitely an emotional attachment to the building we have, but it’s cool to think that we’re building something that is going to be here for the next generations. It’s amazing.”

Sackmann wasn’t the only one to describe the day as surreal. His staff, a devoted team of educators who we’ve written about before, is downright giddy about the move to a new campus. Some of them are still in the “pinch me” phase, their superintendent joked.

“When we come back in the fall and the walls are going up, that’s going to bring on a whole new level of excitement,” he said. “Today’s definitely got some buzz, but once the walls start going up, I think we are going to be ecstatic.”

In his address, Sackmann made sure to thank the WPS staff, both the ones here today and the ones who came before them. It takes a long time to build a strong foundation, and everyone who’s walked through the doors at Walthill since it opened after the turn of last century is responsible for theirs.

“I want to take a moment and recognize our staff, both the ones who are no longer working with us and those who are still here today. You guys are the heart of the organization. Long before there were plans for this new campus you've made due and you've done your best to educate, care for, and love our students. We're excited to see what possibilities we have moving forward as we move towards this beautiful campus. Your commitment, passion, and belief in students has been a driving force before our growth and success, and this campus belongs to you guys as much as it does anyone else.”

Sackmann called the new building “generational.” Eventually, after a prayer and blessing from the Omaha Tribe, he picked up one of those eight shovels, flanked by the team from Boyd Jones Construction and scooped up some dirt. Walthill students, who took in the celebration with Kona Ice, hooted and hollered.

You could hear and feel their joy, on this momentous Thursday afternoon in May and for a hundred years to come.