Officials and contractors broke ground Tuesday at the new home of the Mighty Caribs, marking the territory’s third school groundbreaking in the past 30 days.
Once completed, the rebuilt St. Croix Central High School will serve up to one thousand students. The campus is slated to include a theater, football field, dedicated suites for learning, music, visual arts and dance, and — eventually — an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Construction is expected to cost $319 million and is being done by Consigli/Benton, who aim to finish work by December 2029.
For V.I. Education Commissioner Dionne Wells-Hedrington, the rebuild “represents far more than bricks.”
“For years, this community has endured. For years, we have had to pivot. For years, we have had to deal with the issues of life,” she said. “We have seen disruption, displacement and delay, but we have also seen determination. We have seen a community that refused to give up on its children, its educators and its future. Today, we declare this as a season of rebuilding and replanting.”
J. Benton vice president Eric Cusin shared memories of playing soccer on the St. Croix Central field — “mostly losing,” he acknowledged — and said the school will be rebuilt “to withstand whatever Mother Nature decides to test us with.” V.I. Disaster Recovery Office Director Adrienne Williams-Octalien, a proud Carib, said that some of the territory’s 1,600-plus recovery projects “just hit a little different, and this is one of them.”
A jovial Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. offered closing remarks and pointed to the groundbreaking, which came on the heels of similar ceremonies at Charlotte Amalie High School and the Bertha C. Boschulte PreK-8 School on St. Thomas, as proof against complaints that major disaster recovery projects have taken too long to start.
“They throw shade on the administration, but they’re not throwing shade on the administration, you know — Albert Bryan is good, Tregenza Roach is good — they throwing shade on you,” he told attendees, noting that the work was performed by people at ODR, the V.I. Public Works Department, and people who work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Everybody know that that money that’s coming, it’s the people of the Virgin Islands that work hard with their partners from here and there to go and get that money — not Albert Bryan. I just stand at the head of it.”
He added that when people criticize the recovery effort, “they’re insulting the people of the Virgin Islands.”
“Because there is nobody new coming,” he said. “Y’all know somebody new coming to take over the recovery after the election? It’s the same people. So today, I want to apologize for them and say to you, thank you for your hard work.”
