October 8, 2024
By: Dwayne Page
For the first time in almost a year members of the county commission and board of education will meet together tonight (Tuesday, October 8) in an informal workshop to possibly jumpstart plans for new school construction. That meeting starts at 6 p.m. in the auditorium of the county complex.
Five years ago (2019), the first schematic site plans were developed for the Board of Education by architects of Upland Design Group to build a new Pre-K to 2nd grade school adjacent to Northside Elementary School and the following year (2020) the board purchased the property, a 24.5-acre site on North Congress Boulevard. The price paid was $18,000 per acre for a total of $441,000.
In October 2022, the site plan was updated and shown for the first time to the county commission in a joint meeting with the school board and architects. Another meeting was held between the board of education and county commission in November 2023 but no agreement came out of the session. The total estimated project cost at that time was $46,199,875. Today, it’s more than $53 million, according to updated cost projections.
In March 2024, the board of education rejected a request from the county to make a one-time contribution of $2 million from the school system’s ($10 million) fund balance reserves to help fund construction of the new school. Skeptical of the move, Director Patrick Cripps and the Board said taking $2 million from the school system’s fund balance or reserve account would be digging a little too deeply, especially at a time when the school district has other needs which require funding.
According to Upland Design Group, the proposed new Pre-K to 2nd grade Smithville Elementary School is 124,207 square feet in size and would be designed to accommodate 800 students with room for future expansion to house up to 300 additional students (1,100) total. The school would be built with 11 classrooms for each grade level of kindergarten, first, and second grade (33 classrooms for 20 students each) along with seven Pre-K classrooms for 20 students each plus four CDC/SPED classrooms as needed. The future expansion would accommodate 15 new classrooms at 20 students each. There would be 189 parking spaces on the campus.
The existing Smithville Elementary School, originally built in 1958, now is 70,557 square feet in size, and had an enrollment of 534 students in August 2024. As far back as 2017, a facilities study by Upland Design Group, concluded that the school, which has mold and other concerns, should be replaced and repurposed for other uses.