Legacy Traditional School leaders, staffers and students last week celebrated the halfway point on an expansion project adding more than 11,000 square feet to the Maricopa campus.

The expansion will bring full-day kindergarten and pre-K programs to Legacy for the first time.

The project adds seven classrooms and a gymnasium to the school known in the Legacy school chain as the “Mother Ship” because it’s the first campus built 16 years ago at 17760 Regent Drive.

Today, tuition-free Legacy, a K-8 learning institution, has 21 schools in Arizona, including a Legacy Online Academy, plus three in Nevada and three in Texas.

The Legacy expansion project began in March and will be completed in July in time for the new school year.

Principal Susie Pries said the addition will create space for hundreds more students. The school’s enrollment is now maxed out at 1,320 students.

“This building will house five full-day kindergarten rooms, two pre-kindergarten rooms and an artificial turfed gymnasium,” Pries said, looking over the newly framed and sided structure.

Priess and Legacy public relations representative, Bobby Charette, took InMaricopa on a tour of the future educational facility yesterday.

Besides the indoor gym, an additional outdoor playground will be built for children’s play outside the kindergarten and pre-K classrooms.

Plans include 1,950 square feet of porches.