The Cobb Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to approve a $1.6 million contract for an architect for the new Eastvalley Elementary School.
The design work will be done by the Atlanta firm of Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates, Inc., and construction for the $31.6 million replacement school could get under way by the fall.
Eastvalley will be moving to the site of the former East Cobb Middle School on Holt Road, across from Wheeler High School.
Separate contracts for demolition of the old facility and the replacement work will need school board approval.
The funding for all of those elements comes from collections from the current Cobb Ed-SPLOST V sales tax.
Eastvalley, located on Lower Roswell Road at the Holt Road intersection, has been overcrowded for years.
The school currently has nearly 800 students in 36 regular classrooms and 13 trailers, many of them aging. The condition of those units has prompted complaints from Eastvalley parents.
The Cobb County School District said the new Eastvalley will take up 136,110 square feet, including 61 classrooms, and could hold around 962 K-5 students when it is completed, possibly by 2022.
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The school board also voted Thursday night to spend $303,000 for new a HVAC system for the kitchen at Shallowford Falls Elementary School in East Cobb, and to rename the restructured Riverside Intermediate School in Smyrna to City View Elementary School when it opens in August.
Also on Thursday, the school board voted to extend Superintendent Chris Ragsdale’s contract by a year to 2023. No financial terms were disclosed. Last year, the board gave Ragsdale a seven-percent pay raise to boost his annual salary to $350,000.
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