The Cobb County School District has been posting several pieces on its website about the Nov. 2 SPLOST VI referendum, illustrating what has been—and will be—constructed with previous and continuing sales tax revenues.
One of them is the upcoming replacement of Eastvalley Elementary School, which has been earmarked for $31.6 million in current SPLOST V funding.
But since an architectural contract was approved in February 2020—right before the COVID-19 pandemic—there’s been little information forthcoming about construction details.
We inquired back in March, at the behest of some readers, and the answer was that there was not a timeline.
In August, the Cobb Board of Education approved spending $348,000 to demolish the former East Cobb Middle School on Holt Road, where Eastvalley will be relocated.
That work is expected to be done by December. When we saw the district’s post about Eastvalley dated Monday, it included three renderings (shown at top and below), so we thought we’d ask again.
Here’s what a district spokeswoman passed along on Wednesday:
“Once details for the Eastvalley replacement school are finalized and the contract awarded, construction is expected to begin in 2022. The new facility is scheduled to welcome students in August 2023.”
The Atlanta architectural firm of Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates, Inc. hired by the Cobb school district designs a wide variety of buildings, including schools, among them Duluth High School and Lithonia High School in metro Atlanta.
The new Eastvalley campus is projected to be built to include 136,110 square feet and 61 classrooms, and could hold around 962 K-5 students. It’s one of three elementary school replacement projects in the current SPLOST V, which expires at the end of 2023.
Eastvalley parents have been pressing the district about overcrowded conditions for years at the Eastvalley campus on Lower Roswell Road, which was built in the early 1960s to hold around 400 students.
This year Eastvalley has more than 700 students and more than a dozen trailers, whose conditions have been called “deplorable.”
It’s the only school in East Cobb to get a rebuild in the current SPLOST. If the extension is approved by voters, SPLOST VI will generate revenues for a rebuild for Sprayberry High School and classroom additions at Kincaid, Mt. Bethel, Murdock, Sope Creek and Tritt elementary schools.
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What’s going to go on the site where Eastvalley currently resides? Another Cobb County School building, or will it also be demolished?
Thank you for the reporting work! I have been wondering what the timeline was.