CLEVELAND, Tenn. — George R. Stuart Elementary School is scheduled for some TLC this summer.
It will become the latest addition to a list of older school buildings in the Cleveland city system to get a 21st-century update.
“The parents at Stuart have been very patient. They know we have had many other needs, too. But now it is their time,” said city school board member Dawn Robinson.
Stuart’s pupils will own part of the new look. They designed a colorful mural on the theme of “River of Knowledge” that will greet future visitors.
The children voted on the theme and then went to work, said principal Randall Stephens.
From the design, students fixed small tiles onto paper. When the paper is removed from the wall later, the tiles will form the new mural, said visiting artist Jennifer White.
On Saturday, parents, grandparents, teachers and PTO volunteers chipped away at 50-year-old tile on an entrance wall to clear space for the mural.
The project is funded in part from Allied Arts of the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce and partly from a PTO fundraising drive.
At a recent planning meeting, city school board members reviewed the Stuart work to be done. The list includes gutting and refurnishing the gym and bathrooms, adding security lights and more energy-efficient lighting, installing ceiling tiles and, if the funds hold out, putting in refinished gym bleachers and computerized hallway clocks.
“Basically we will get a new school,” said Site Committee Chairman Murl Dirksen.
“Getting our existing schools in good shape also means less expensive maintenance,” said board Chairwoman Peggy Pesterfield.
Earlier this spring, Bradley County Schools administrators unveiled the renovation and additions to Valley View Elementary.
New classrooms and a media center, plus more office and storage space were the focus of that project.
Both Stuart and Valley View were built in the 1960s. Valley View was a consolidation of three tiny country schools where more than one grade shared a classroom. Stuart was a new school built to serve what was then the expanding outer limits of the city.
Two years ago the city focused on Arnold Memorial Elementary, built in the early 1930s, filling it with technology that did not exist when the school first opened.