New wing open at St. Olaf Catholic School

IC photo/Marie Mischel

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St. Olaf Catholic School Principal Simon McFall and Father Andrzej Skrzypiec, pastor of St. Olaf Parish, are shown in front of the new multipurpose room, which will serve as the school cafeteria and also as a space for parish gatherings.

BOUNTIFUL — After five years of planning and two years of construction, the St. Olaf Catholic School community is enjoying a new building wing that includes a multipurpose area suitable for parish gatherings, a courtyard and four new classrooms. The design also incorporated details like carpeting that is certified by the National Asthma Society and features such as a small reflection space at the end of the hallway.

“Hopefully it will be a center of [Catholic] learning and formation in Davis County,” said Fr. Andrzej Skrzypiec, pastor of St. Olaf Parish, which includes the school.

Planning for the project began in 2008 and construction on the project started in 2020 with upgrades to the gas line and electrical system in the old school building and to the drainage across the entire campus.

“One of the original issues we had, because we’re built on a slope, is that water would run into the building endlessly,” said Simon McFall, principal.  

The parking lot and roads also were redone at that time. The second phase of the project, construction of the 16,000-square-foot expansion, broke ground in March 2022 and was opened on Aug. 14, the first day of the school year. However, the multipurpose room, which also serves as the school cafeteria, means there are “no more lunches in the classroom,” Fr. Skrzypiec said.

The expansion also was necessary because “our middle school used to be in the basement,” McFall said. “And that was a hard sell, right? To tell people after they’d been here for six years, ‘Congratulations! You’re going into the basement; that’s where middle school is.’ And so now middle school has four beautiful classrooms in a wing of its own.”  

The multipurpose room has presentation screens and audio-visual capabilities and a commercial kitchen so that it can be used for parish, diocesan and community events as well as those for the school, Fr. Skrzypiec said.

“It’s been lovely to just start to think about how we can use the space,” McFall added.

The expansion joins the old school building and sits almost in the geographic center of the campus in the shape of a cross, with the top pointing to the parish rectory. The sides point to the original building and to the church, and the base is the welcoming space into the school. The shape represents “who we are as a faith, it’s who we are as a people, and it really brings our campus together,” McFall said.

The principal’s office is at the junction of the school hallway and has windows on three sides, allowing McFall to “tell if every kid in the building is having a good day,” he said. “I get to see every student pass by my window. I get to see all my faculty pass by my window; it’s the center, it’s the heart of the campus. It gives me a pulse of what is going on in the building, which is exciting.”

Although the construction is complete, more work is necessary: The kitchen has no equipment, furnishings and religious artwork are being sought and HVAC for the old school is needed, McFall said.