AVON, Ind. (WISH) — Avon Community Schools is seeing long-term expansion plans come to life this school year.

Wednesday students at Avon High School noticed some changes right away with a new main entrance. The building’s addition includes a new front office, classrooms and labs.

The school also received upgrades to the cafeteria and hallways.

According to Superintendent Dr. Scott Wyndham, nearly every school in the district is seeing some kind of renovation or expansion to welcome new students eventually.

“(We’re) really excited that more families are choosing Avon,” Wyndham said. “(It’s) a place that they want to have their kids (and) be a part of our school system.”

Avon Schools is winding down a major construction project that will restructure its schools in the 2025-26 school year.

Fifth graders will move to the elementary schools, making those buildings K – 5. Meanwhile, the middle schools will then serve 6th – 8th grade.

Wyndham says a lot of the growth is coming at the middle and high school levels.

“We’ve been very responsible in our growth, we’ve expanded some of our smaller schools also delayed the need to build a new school,” Wyndham said. “We can’t just accommodate that growth anymore without pretty significant construction.”

They’ve also noticed a trend among students who speak more than one language. According to the superintendent, these students now make up about 15% of the district.

This has a direct impact on Avon’s teacher of the year, Samantha Smith.

She’s been teaching at River Birch Elementary since 2012.  Though, this year will be her third teaching multilingual students. 

“We just know here in Avon we are continuing to get more neighborhoods more kids,” Smith said. “We know that that will include kids that are multilingual.”

The number of these students Smith teaches has nearly doubled since she switched to teaching multilingual classes.

She says it’s a testament to the community Avon is becoming.

“We are welcoming,” Smith said. We love the families that we have. We love the diversity, we are inclusive for all. I think that really shows the reason that they stay here.”

Wyndham says along with building expansion, the district hopes to continue investing in its multilingual program.

“I think our families appreciate how we’ve embraced that program within our school district,” Wyndham said. “It just leads more and more families to come.”

The district will open a new middle school and finish expansion at Avon High School for the start of next school year.

When it’s all done, Wyndham says Avon High School could eventually serve about 4,000 students.