School construction
Pockets of population growth lead to bigger, better schools

By Sandra Bearden

These days, the little one-room schoolhouse is a distant memory. "Big" is now the operative word for school construction.

Even elementary schools are jumbo-sized structures with labyrinth-like hallways. And in some new high schools, facilities rival those of major colleges.

Driving this academic building boom is an increase in school enrollment beginning in the late 1980s. Total elementary and secondary enrollment jumped by 19 percent between 1988 and 2001, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U. S. Department of Education.

While the rate of growth has slowed, the NCES projects another 5 percent increase between 2001 and 2013.

School construction is now a $22.5 billion business, according to American School and University magazine. The June 2004 issue of the publication pointed out that while K-12 enrollment has doubled in the past 75 years, the number of school buildings has declined from 247,000 to 94,112. This denotes a vastly increased average school size since the 1930s.

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Contractors in the Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee are helping meet these needs for new facilities. Ironically, while the NCES forecasts slight enrollment decreases in all three of those states, pockets of rapid growth are still creating local demands for new schools.

Following is a look at school construction under way in the south central region.

Alabama. New schools under construction include two rapidly developing communities at each end of the state. Huntsville, in the Tennessee Valley, first grew with the nation's space program. In recent years, it has continued to attract both homegrown and outside high-tech industries. Spanish Fort, at the southern tip of Alabama, is in the flourishing area around Mobile Bay.

Two new schools will go into service soon in the western section of Huntsville. Pearce Construction Company of Huntsville completed the $13 million Providence School in February. The school will accommodate 800 children in grades K-8, all coming from new subdivisions being built in the area.

The 106,000-sq.-ft., two-story red brick building features a full-sized gym for middle-school children, a half-sized gym for younger students, an audio-visual room functioning as a small auditorium and an elevated stage area in the spacious cafeteria.

Bruce Mullin, project manager for Pearce, said the masonry and brick structure will include some structural steel and hollow-core, precast concrete for the second floor.

"We're using a water source HVAC system in the Providence School," said John F. Brown, director of facilities, maintenance, construction and transportation for Huntsville City Schools. "The system works like a heat pump, but instead of doing your heat exchange with air, it does it with liquids. So in the winter you have hot water heaters that bring water in at about 70 degrees, and in the summer you run the water through a cooling tower to get 70 degrees. It's the best technology available now."

Brown said that while there were no special construction challenges on the job, there was a "first" for the Huntsville School System.

"The City of Huntsville Public Works Department did all the site preparation work for us," he said. "We've never done that before. It saved us a million dollars and kept us within budget."

Nearby is the $18 million Columbia High School, a 135,000-sq.-ft. masonry and brick veneer structure in Huntsville's Research Park. General contractor is Consolidated Construction of Huntsville.

Distinctive architectural features of the high school are a circular media center on the second floor of the school and towering concrete columns at the entrance to the auditorium, which will seat 800. The school has two full gyms.

Construction began in February 2003 and will be completed in July.

"Columbia will house Huntsville's New Technology High School, started here several years ago," Brown said. "The school provides special training in computer science and engineering skills to fill local labor market needs and better prepare students for college. Eventually, we plan to add even more laboratory areas."

Brown said the city also provided assistance for the high school, buying the site and donating it to the school system.

At the other end of the state, Rod Cooke Construction completed the 120,000-sq.-ft. Spanish Fort High School in January. Work began in December 2003. The school has two levels, one housing educational facilities, the other a 20,000-sq.-ft. mezzanine supporting all mechanical equipment.

The $12.8 million structural steel and concrete school has a shingle roof and brick veneer exterior.

"The most unique thing about this project is that it's being heated and cooled by a geothermal loop well system," said Wes Cooke, project manager. "The system has about 400 geothermal wells drilled in the north parking area. Each well is about 250 feet deep, and they're linked together and looped into the building by 40 mi. of pipe. This is a 'green' system designed to be energy efficient and save energy costs in the long run."

Cooke said the challenge of installing the wells was that his firm could only drill six to eight wells a day, meaning that the process took about nine months to complete. Weather problems - notably Hurricane Ivan - compounded delays.

"The weather also hurt us because so many skilled craftsmen were doing hurricane restoration work," he said.

Arkansas. Forget the Beverly Hillbillies. Northwest Arkansas schools are state-of-the-art centers for learning, sports and school activities.

Numerous projects are under way to provide adequate building space for schools in the fast-growing Bentonville-Rogers-Springdale area. Bentonville is home to the retailing giant Wal-Mart, which has attracted numerous other companies to the area.

Todd Ketterman of Crossland Construction of Columbus, Kan., is project manager for a 193,000-sq.-ft., $20 million high school project in Bentonville.

"It's not a brand-new school," he said. "It's an addition that doubles the size of the present Bentonville High School."

"We're calling the addition 'BHS2'," said Joe Haynie, director of facilities for Bentonville School District 6. "It's practically a separate school because it includes its own cafeteria and classrooms. We'll probably put the ninth and tenth grades in that building and the upper grades in the older school. EWI, another contractor, is building an expansion of the old high school that includes two gyms and 15 classrooms. In addition to that, we have a huge fine arts center that will be shared by all four grades."

One feature unique to a small town is the school's indoor football practice facility with artificial turf. Along with locker rooms and weight rooms, the indoor practice area encompasses 90,000 sq. ft. There also is a 15,000-sq.-ft. courtyard covered in artificial turf.

The addition itself is made of structural steel, concrete block and brick >> veneer, with decorative rectangular metal panels on the exterior. Construction began in December and is scheduled for completion in fall 2006.

Randy Armstrong, project manager for Crossland, is supervising construction of a sports complex adjoining the school - a separate $13.4 million contract. The project, which began in fall 2003, includes a football field and 5,500-seat stadium. The complex also includes baseball and softball fields, a soccer field encircled by a running track, concessions stands and parking areas. Completion is set for May 2005.

Another Bentonville project is Central Park Elementary at Morningstar, an 82,000-sq.-ft. structure of structural steel and masonry, with an exterior of brick veneer and metal-clad panels. The $7.6 million building has two-story classroom wings and a single story cafeteria. Construction began last year and will be completed by August.

Danny Langerot, project manager for Crossland, said that the project had no special quirks, but finding skilled labor in the area is sometimes a problem.

"It's especially difficult to find ironworkers in the area," Langerot said. "We usually bring them in from Kansas."

Kent Woodson, another Crossland project manager, is overseeing construction of both a high school and middle school on a 120-acre site in Springdale, Ark. Total area for both projects is 510,000 sq. ft. as part of a single $47 million contract.

The 385,000-sq.-ft. high school (grades 10-12) and the 120,000-sq.-ft. middle school (grades 6-7) both have a contemporary-classical design of dark red brick with buff brick trim and white columns. Although the two schools share a common site, they don't share roads or facilities, Woodson said.

A two-story rotunda connects the high school's two academic wings, providing an alternative to long hallways and giving the school a symbolic center in which its 2,000 students can meet and communicate. The rotunda also opens off into an interior courtyard about the size of three football fields, providing a space for impromptu assemblies, performances and pep rallies. The school's media center borders the rotunda and courtyard.

"The design provides a secure, controlled environment - important for schools today," said Bradley Chilcote of the schools' architect, Wittenberg, Delony & Davidson of Little Rock.

In addition to classrooms, laboratories and other academic facilities, the high school also includes an auditorium, gymnasium, cafeteria and football training facility.

"Our biggest challenge has been the auditorium, especially the stage and walls around the stage," Woodson said. "One wall is 75 ft. of freestanding block with a great deal of bracing. We had to be pretty precise in building it."

Construction of the two Springdale schools began in August 2003 and will be completed in July.

Numerous contractors are working on area school projects. Woodson said his firm's own team of workers and ability to use skilled craftsmen on various projects has helped win school contracts.

"Because we do so much work ourselves, including pouring concrete slabs and doing our own steel erection, we have an advantage over some other contractors," Woodson said. "Subcontractors like to work with us because we're able to push schedules harder."

Mississippi. The area around Jackson is home to much of the state's school growth. Carothers Construction Inc. of Water Valley, Miss., has managed four contracts recently for the Hines County School District south of Jackson.

"Byram Middle School is the fourth project funded by a $21 million bond issue," said Joe Hill, project manager for Carothers. "The contract for middle school is $10.3 million. We've completed the other three schools and will finish work on this one in April."

The one-story middle school has 100,000 sq. ft. of enclosed structure. Walls are load-bearing masonry with bar joists and roofing is modified membrane, with standing-seam metal roofing in some areas.

The job included clearing land on a 15-acre site, adding roadways to a county-built bridge that crosses a creek running through school property and constructing a sanitary sewer system.

The sewer system was the biggest hang-up on the project, Hill said, but the challenge was not in building it.

"The special problem was that the (state's) Department of Environmental Quality has been experiencing problems with flooding in the tributary crossing the school property," Hill said. "They're trying to get some construction practices in place to alleviate flooding. So we spent about eight months going through an elaborate approval process with various agencies. There was a little bit of Murphy's Law involved."

East of Jackson, work is under way on the $17.5 million Brandon High School, a 260,000-sq.-ft. facility designed to accommodate 1,400 students. The two-story structure is brick and masonry. In addition to classrooms, the school includes a gym, physical education room, choral room, band hall, practice room, eight science laboratories, four business computer labs, four kitchens and sports practice fields.

Yates Construction of Philadelphia, Miss., is managing the project.

The school has several unusual features, said Hugh Carr, assistant superintendent of support services for the Rankin County School District.

"The offices for the school's assistant principal and school counselors are separate from the main office area," Carr said. "This gives our administrative personnel a presence throughout the school."

The federal Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act is funding a technology discovery lab in the new school.

"This lab allows students to explore such subjects as biotechnology or marine biology in three-week increments," Carr said. "We will also have a career center that will provide students direction in choosing their future work."

Carr said the major challenge in building the high school came when work began on the project in December 2003.

"In the very beginning, we found we had expansive clay," Carr said. "That's the kind that contracts when it's dry and expands when it's wet. We had to re-dig and replace the clay with proper fill dirt."