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Porter and Max Openshaw, two of the surviving children of late state school board member Mark Openshaw, cut the ceremonial red ribbon on Thursday for a new deaf and blind education campus that bears their father's name.
The $16 million, 48,000-square-foot C. Mark Openshaw Education Center is located on the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (USDB) campus on 3300 South, and combines classroom space, a gymnasium and performance stage and administrative offices, USDB Superintendent Joel Coleman said.
"In our Salt Lake area, we were missing a few key elements for our students," he said.
Coleman said the decision to name the building after Openshaw is a tribute to his legacy of service, and his support for the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind and its students.
Openshaw died in a plane crash, along with his wife and two of his children, in 2015.
"His life exemplified the kind of selfless service to individuals that we try to provide to our students," Coleman said. "We're happy to be able to memorialize him in this manner and honored his surviving children and other family members could attend today."
State school board Chairman David Crandall remarked on his friendship with Openshaw during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and presented a schoolteacher bell — the traditional gift for departing state school board members — to Max Openshaw in memory of his father.
The bells are typically mounted on a plaque, but Crandall said that before Openshaw died he had requested an unmounted bell that could ring.
"The board was really blessed and fortunate to have Mark as a member," Crandall said.
Sydnee Dickson, Utah's state superintendent of public instruction, said the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind has done a "remarkable" job connecting with parents, educators and school administrators to provide high-quality education to blind and hearing-impaired students.
"This building serves as a reminder that students with unique circumstances and disabilities really deserve the best," she said.
The Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind operates a number of satellite campuses throughout the state, as well as centralized centers like the campus in Salt Lake County.
Coleman said the schools are currently looking at acquiring land for a similar, but smaller, education center in Utah County.
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