New Eastvalley ES

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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• Eastvalley parents speak out about ‘deplorable’ trailers

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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The first step toward building a new Eastvalley Elementary School is on the horizon.

The Cobb Board of Education on Thursday will be asked to approve a contract for architectural design for a replacement school on the former campus of East Cobb Middle School on Holt Road.

The Cobb County School District is recommending the board approve a $1.58 million contract to the architectural firm of Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates, Inc. of Atlanta.

The contract will be discussed at a board work session at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, and during the board’s voting session at 7 p.m.

Both meetings will take place at the Cobb County School District central office, 514 Glover 9St., in Marietta. An executive session will take place in between.

(Read the full agenda here.)

A replacement for the current Eastvalley facility on Lower Roswell Road is included in the current Cobb Education SPLOST V collection period.

Related story

• Eastvalley parents speak out about ‘deplorable’ trailers

Funding for the design work, reconstruction (estimated at around $31 million) and demolition of the former East Cobb MS buildings are earmarked in SPLOST V, which is being collected through 2023.

The Eastvalley rebuild is one of three for elementary schools in the current SPLOST. Construction for a new Harmony Leland ES in Mableton got underway last year, and plans also call for a new King Springs ES in Smyrna.

After the architectural design work for Eastvalley is complete, the board would then be asked to approve a separate construction contract.

Eastvalley currently enrolls around 700 students, around twice its stated capacity. The school has 13 trailers, many of them aging, which house about one-third of the student body.

In September, parents of Eastvalley students complained to the board about the condition of the trailers and demanded to know a timetable for the rebuild.

Also on Tuesday’s agenda is a contract for $303,000 for kitchen HVAC improvements at Shallowford Falls Elementary School.

Board recognitions at the Thursday evening meeting will honor Cayce Pope of J.J. Daniell Middle School, the district’s 2020 Middle School Counselor of the Year, and  Patty DaSilva of Pope High School, the district’s High School Counselor of the Year.

 

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