Fayette County’s school population could double within 20 years and that’s causing some consternation for the schools system’s leaders.

Facilities Director Mike Satterfield delivered the sobering statistics during Saturday’s Board of Education retreat. The two major growth areas during the next few years are expected to be Tyrone and the center of the county, he added.

“Tyrone has finally taken off. For years, we kept thinking it would grow and now people have discovered it,” he said.

Another area the school system is eyeing is the West Village in Peachtree City, which, once developed, could add hundreds of students to the school system’s rolls. Those students would attend Flat Rock Middle School and Sandy Creek High School, not schools inside Peachtree City.

During the 1980s and ‘90s, the school system added about 1,000 students a year, but now the number is down to a more manageable 500 to 600 students a year, Satterfield said.

Since the 1990s, the school system has averaged building one high school, one middle school and two new elementary schools every five years, and Satterfield hopes the system can put off building a new high school for a few years.

The county’s newest high school, Whitewater, cost about $35 million to build, but new high schools are now running upwards of $65-70 million.

“At Whitewater, the core facility was built for 1,800 students, so we can add classrooms there and also at Sandy Creek [High School],” he said.

The school board is also trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to purchasing property. Land for Whitewater High School cost the system about $9,500 an acre, but the Inman Road property for the new elementary school was almost $25,000 per acre.

The system has managed to keep the cost of buildings down by developing prototype schools, which has drawn attention from state officials.

“Our elementary school prototype is now the state prototype,” Satterfield said.

In addition to anticipating future growth, Satterfield’s department also oversees the existing facilities, which have grown from 1.8 million square feet to 4 million square feet in the last 11 years. He asked the board to consider adding more maintenance workers, because the system currently only has half the national average of workers.

“We get over 6,000 work orders a year. Every morning in my department it’s like triage and we have to figure out who’s bleeding the worst,” he added.

login to post comments