A $200 million school facilities plan for the Hamilton County (Tennessee) district is recommending campus closures and renovations.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that over the course of the two-phase, seven-year plan, three new schools would be built, seven schools would be renovated or receive additions, six schools would be closed and three schools would move to new locations.
Additional schools would also be modernized or expanded in the latter half of the plan to address the district’s growth and enhance efficiency.
The plan is not final and hasn’t been officially recommended to the Hamilton County school board.
A seven-person working group has met every two weeks for several months to create a plan that would address the nearly $1 billion in needed repairs across the school system.
In the Hixson area, the plan proposes building a new elementary school on the DuPont Elementary site, which would consolidate three of the four small area schools — Alpine Crest, DuPont, Hixson and Rivermont — onto one larger campus.
Clifton Hills Elementary would be closed and its students rezoned, and Soddy Daisy and Dalewood middle schools would be relocated to form schools with larger grade spans.
The plan calls for an expansion of Daisy Elementary to create a K-12 experience on the site the school shares with Soddy Daisy High. Dalewood Middle students would join an expanded Brainerd High campus to create a co-located middle-high school.
The district does not have plans for what it would do with the closed school campuses; School Superintendent Justin Robertson said he would recommend retaining the properties for potential future district use or community partnerships.
Other school buildings would be expanded and renovated, including Eastside Elementary, East Lake Elementary, Thrasher Elementary and both Lookout Valley schools.
The second phase of the plan recommends that both the Center for Creative Arts and Normal Park Upper and Lower be relocated to increase the number of seats available at magnet schools. Two new campuses, on the former sites of Cigna and the BlueCross BlueShields’ Gateway property, respectively, would also help serve students starting during the first phase.
