South Fulton’s population continues to swell. And with it comes the need for more schools. Groundbreakings for Oakley Township Elementary School and Jones-Hall Middle School earlier this week should help offset the growing need in growing area.

Located on Oakley Terrace near Oakley Industrial Boulevard and Ga. Highway 138, Oakley Township Elementary is expected to be open for students in the 2007-2008 school year. The 17.9-acre site and will be home to a 122,250 square-foot, two-story steel frame building with a brick veneer exterior.

Designed to accommodate 850 students and expansion potential to serve 1,000, the school will be outfitted with 42 regular classrooms, 15 special purpose classrooms, a media center, gymnasium, cafeteria and administrative offices. The campus will include three age-appropriate exterior play structures and a 10,000 square-foot concrete play pad.

Oakley Township Elementary is the new prototype school expected to open for the 2007-2008 school year. The two-story design was developed specifically to address the dwindling availability of large parcels of property within Fulton County. The compact plan of the new prototype offers the flexibility to provide the same site amenities typical of all prototypical elementary schools but within the limits of a small property, school officials said.

Groundbreaking for the new Jones-Hall Middle School also came this week. Located on Hall Road west of Ga. Highway 92, the middle school is designed to accommodate 1,200 students and will be the ninth of the prototypical middle schools designed for Fulton County Schools.

The 180,500 square-foot steel frame structure with brick veneer sits on 41.6 acres near Renaissance Elementary School. The school will be composed of 34 standard classrooms, 12 standard science labs, 20 special purpose classrooms, exterior courtyard and outdoor classroom, media center cafeteria with full-service kitchen, gymnasium with a stage and bleacher seating for 448, multi-purpose playfields with track, softball field, tennis courts and a basketball/volleyball court.

The Jones-Hall project is organized around a tandem corridor system linking the public zones, such as the rotunda/commons area, cafeteria and gymnasium, with the academic areas. The midpoint of the plan is defined by the media center, the symbolic heart of the school, with five major instructional wings organized around this element, officials said.

Both schools will come with state-of-the-art fire alarm, energy management and computer network systems.

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