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Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
$43.7M contract for new Farragut elementary school approved by Board of Education
FARRAGUT, Tenn. (WATE) — A new school is set to be built in the Town of Farragut after a unanimous vote Thursday night to approve a more than $43 million contract with Merit Construction. The new school will be built between Boring Road and Village Commons Boulevard. This area of Knox County has seen rapid growth over the last several years meaning more schools are needed. Even with a new school built not too long ago, schools in the area are still being subjected to overcrowding. College counselors urge students to complete FAFSA despite Dept. of Education uncertainty To get an idea of the need for a new elementary school in Farragut, look no further than the current student pickup lines. Cars covering parking lots of nearby shops and lining West End Avenue from Kingston Pike all the way up to the Farragut Intermediate, Middle and High Schools. 'We have been dealing with overcrowding in our schools for a long time now,' said KCS District 5 School Board Representative Lauren Morgan. 'We are just thrilled that we get to have a new elementary school and are excited for all the changes that are going to happen in the Farragut community.' Some of those changes Morgan is referring to includes plans to turn Farragut Primary and Intermediate into elementary schools after this new elementary school is completed. All three of these schools will funnel into the existing middle and high schools off Kingston Pike. 'We worked very closely with the Town of Farragut. We did a traffic study. We've done a survey of the land and we are just getting really prepared,' Dr. Garfield Adams said. 'Of course, we had the RFQ that was sent out and the RFP as far as what contractor we wanted to use. Now we are just going to move forward with the construction process. Prior to that, of course, we are going to have to have the architectural design as well.' This will be the second new school in the West Knox County area since 2023 when Mill Creek Elementary was completed. West Knox County and Farragut in particular has seen tremendous growth over the last several years. Tennessee Senate passes controversial bill that would allow school districts to deny undocumented students 'We've had so much growth and so much development in the Farragut area and we see that in our schools too. We see it in our classrooms with our kids having to squeeze into tables when we can't quite fit all the desks in and that type of thing,' Morgan said. 'It's easier for students, teachers and everybody when we have adequate space to house everybody in our schools.' Dr. Garfield Adams told 6 News this will be one of the largest elementary schools the county has ever built. 'We are very excited. It will be a state-of-the-art school,' Adams said. 'Of course, we will have programmatic capacity and capacity available because it's one of the largest schools so very excited about the new design and the new school.' We are told, once ground breaking happens, it will be a two-year build time and the school is expected to open for the 2027-28 school year. ▶ See more top stories on Morgan added that the new school could help alleviate some of the congestion and traffic woes where Farragut Intermediate, Middle and High Schools let students out at the end of the day. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New K-8 school in East Knoxville is one step closer to reality after property swap
The site of the former Rule High School in Lonsdale is one step closer to welcoming students again. The Knox County Commission on March 31 approved an agreement with Knox County Schools to hand off the vacant property so KCS can build a new K-8 school in its place. In return, Knox County gets the Beaumont Magnet Academy and the Maynard Elementary School. Those schools will close, and students will instead attend the new K-8 school KCS will build at the Rule School site at 1919 Vermont Ave in Lonsdale. Construction is expected to begin in the summer of 2026 and be completed by 2028. Plans for the new school are moving along as the Beaumont, Lonsdale and Mechanicsville neighborhoods prepare for an influx of students. In 2022, Knoxville received a $40 million federal grant for its Transforming Western Heights project, an affordable housing development that is projected to be home to 400 school-age kids. The development will add 740 low- and mixed-income homes to the neighborhood northwest of downtown., The new school also will fix atypical school zones where peer groups in the Mechanicsville, Lonsdale and Beaumont communities are split up as they progress through elementary, middle and high school. Students who now attend Beaumont Magnet Academy, Maynard, Lonsdale and West View elementary schools are split up to Bearden, Northwest, Whittle Springs or Vine for middle school, which then feed into Central, Fulton and West high schools. There are no standalone middle schools in those neighborhoods, a challenge a new K-8 school could address. KCS allocated $66 million in its capital improvement funds last year in anticipation of a change in the neighborhoods. "When you have a larger school, you have more teachers and more resources," Assistant Superintendent of Operations Garfield Adams said at a Jan. 22 community meeting. A new K-8 school "is a very innovative, creative idea," he said. Under the state's funding formula, money follows individual children. At a bigger school, there would be greater flexibility of programming such as arts and science, Adams said. Beaumont Magnet Academy: current enrollment - 507, projected enrollment by 2029 - 523 Maynard Elementary: current enrollment - 110, projected enrollment by 2029 - 200 Lonsdale Elementary: current enrollment - 547, projected enrollment by 2029 - 357 West View Elementary: current enrollment - 202, projected enrollment by 2029 - 203 Bearden Middle: current enrollment - 1,222, projected enrollment by 2029 - 1,348 Northwest Middle: current enrollment - 797, projected enrollment by 2029 - 1,107 Vine Middle Magnet: current enrollment - 456, projected enrollment by 2029 - 544 Whittle Springs Middle: current enrollment - 458, projected enrollment by 2029 - 439 A new charter school could come in. In exchange for giving KCS the empty Rule School site, Knox County will receive the Beaumont and Maynard buildings and the land they're on. The Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation that requires vacant public school properties to be made available for purchase by charter school sponsors before it can go on the market for everyone else. Former Knox News reporter Areena Arora contributed to this report. Allie Feinberg reports on politics for Knox News. Email her: and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @alliefeinberg. This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knox County property swap to provide space for new Lonsdale K-8 school
