CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Now is the time to begin planning Cleveland’s next new elementary school, according to city officials.
After hearing a presentation by Rick Denning, city schools superintendent, Cleveland City Council members put two school-related items on their agenda for a Monday vote.
One item gives the Cleveland Board of Education the green light to begin seeking suitable property for a new school. The other item approves hiring an architect to look over any site selected in order to avoid costly surprises later.
Citing student population growth this school year, Denning said, “we’ve [gotten] to the point we are taking over art rooms and music rooms” for regular classrooms.
The school board already has taken an early look at some sites, Denning said.
He said he likes Bradley County’s recent action to obtain a site big enough for other city functions, such as parks or city services. E.L. Ross Elementary School and Donald P. Yates Primary School are next door to a city fire station and a county ambulance station, he said, but that causes no sound problems.
The county opened its new Park View Elementary School this school year on part of a site that also will be used as a recreation complex.
A cost estimate presented to the City Council during a planning session Monday says a new school would cost about $14.9 million, including costs such as personnel, utility costs and classroom equipment such as computers.
The estimate is based on Mayfield Elementary School, the most recent school opened by the city, while the needed size is based on Blythe-Bower Elementary, the city system’s most populous school.
At the planning session, Councilman Bill Estes asked whether the city should build a school quickly. While student population numbers are up, the average daily membership — students attending on a day-to-day basis — is slightly down, he noted.
NEW SCHOOL ESTIMATES* Land — About 15 acres. $850,000 to $1.2 million* Construction — $12.3 million, plus $650,000 for geothermal heating/air conditioning; $13 million total* Furniture — $251,291Source: Cleveland school board
Estes got his figures based on the last report card for school systems, but Denning said those numbers are not trustworthy and don’t reflect the number of children who show up on the first day of school.
Still, Estes said, those are the numbers planners use and that state funds are based upon.
Councilman Richard Banks said that, whenever the school is built, now is the cost-effective time to plan for it and acquire a suitable site.
Estes pointed out that vacant industrial sites may be available in two to three years after Whirlpool moves from its old plant into a new one.
But renovating what are called brownfield sites — land that could be contaminated by chemicals or other substances — might open environmental and other issues that could make them more costly than a new site, Denning said.