Jessica Webb
editor@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Swain County Board of Education has a vision for a new Swain Middle School campus to be located on Black Hill Road. Most recently, the district put out a Request for Qualifications for design and planning.
The new campus would include a 100,000-square-foot middle school as well as athletic fields. The new school would include three connected buildings with a classroom wing, gymnasium and kitchen/cafeteria and be built for 500 students.
Superintendent Mark Sale explained the request is specifically asking the designs to be in phases, so they can look at it as a board along with the commissioners to make decisions on moving forward. For example, this would allow for construction of the building as its own project and then the ball fields later.
“All of them will end up in a bid-ready project plan but we don’t have to do it all at one time,” Sale said. “The reason we want to approach it that way is we want to get our feet on the ground, but generally speaking when you get all the way through to a bid-ready plan you’re talking about a fair percentage of the cost.”
The next immediate step, he said, is for a committee that will include members from both boards and the school system to review the RFQs and decide.
Back in March, North Carolina Sen. Kevin Corbin and Rep. Mike Clampitt toured the old school and visited the new property. Both have said they will advocate for the project’s funding at the state level.
The school system will try again in the next round for the North Carolina Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund grant. It was passed up on the most recent cycle when requesting $52 million, the third such request.
The school paid for its renovations at the high school several years ago from the same capital needs grant.
“Competition is fierce right now,” Sale said.
“We’re just trying to move closer and closer to being shovel ready so that our next grant proposal is farther ahead than the last,” Sale said. “The more you have done, the greater the possibility is that you’ll get a grant.”
The site itself is still a work in progress. Swain County Commissioners purchased the 17-acre property as part of an agreement that also included a swap of county-owned property at the Industrial Park.
One stipulation was the former landowner agreed to demolish the old one-story brick building on the site. The county has begun some land clearing behind the building.
New HVAC on schedule
Given class will still be in session at the current Arlington Avenue school for the near future, the school system moved forward with replacing the HVAC system at the school this summer. Superintendent Sale said the new system is currently on schedule to be completed within the month before students return.
The project, which also includes the installation new ceiling fans in some locations, was paid primarily through American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) that was received as part of pandemic relief funding.
It’s a big investment, too, with a price tag of about $2.3 million.