Wake County parents and drivers are getting ready for a new sight they haven't seen in years: students and teachers back at Swift Creek Elementary.
School administrators welcomed parents and students Tuesday to its newly renovated building in the last of its months-long school tours. Swift Creek has been under renovation for several years after the original building was demolished.
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Work first began in the summer of 2024 to demolish and replace the school, one part of a seven-year school improvement project for Wake County Public Schools.
The newly renovated building will hold the same number of students, but the square footage will be larger to meet new curriculum standards. Swift Creek has a rich history in Raleigh dating back to the late 1920s. The school was last renovated in 1991.
The school's re-opening means drivers should expect heavy traffic around that corridor to account for school arrival and dismissal. Before the original building's demolition, drivers may remember traffic headaches around Tryon Road, particularly around school dismissal and carpool times.
When asked how the school plans to alleviate that congestion with the new building, principal Darrell Propst touted a new two-lane loop that was made possible by the building's new location further away from the road.
“We really anticipate it’s going to be much better," Propst quipped. "Traffic historically [was] backed up all the way down to the shopping center. But we have this wonderful winding lane in front of the school that’s going to be two lanes.”
Propst also noted the school's one building will allow security oversight to be far easier than compared to Swift Creek's temporary location where classes were spread across several buildings that were not all connected.