On March 28, 2009  our community suffered a tragic event.
Our 700 elementary school students have permanently lost their school!

Benld Elementary located in a small rural community about an hour northeast of St. Louis, MO and about an hour south of Springfield, IL was built about seven years ago. The damage from mine subsidence happened throughout the school, forcing it to be condemned.  This was not an ongoing issue, the damage (as you see in the pictures) happened in one weekend and it's expected to get worse. The walls are twisting and cracking, floors sinking and rising, in many different directions and basically as the building is sinking it is being torn apart.

The rural communities in this area developed as mining became its key resource many years ago. The school, as well as a majority of the homes, businesses and other buildings, were built over the top of these mines that are hundreds of feet under the ground.

In this case the mine, abandoned in the early 1950’s, under the school collapsed creating an elliptical shaped depression in the ground. The affected area's early estimates were 1,000 feet long and 800 feet wide and it is expected to sink around 3 feet.

For the remainder of the 2008 - 2009 and the beginning of the 2009 - 2010 school year, students are on a split schedule. This means that our high school and middle school students will be in class earlier from 6:50 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. This will allow a second shift of the elementary students to be in the high school classrooms later, from 12:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. Later in the school year 700 students will be placed in a temporary modular building for education.

Our mission is to see that a new school is built.

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