Architects complete 10-year analysis of school space needs

JAMES CITY Along with Tuesday's presentation on a new concept for a fourth middle school in Williamsburg-James City schools, the division's architects delivered a report on just how long the city and county can cope with current growth trends without expanding or building more schools.

Based on that report, dubbed the "10-year Master Plan Study," Chesapeake-based architectural firm RRMM recommended the division build a new 500-seat elementary school by 2019-2020 and build additions onto the high schools by the 2020-21 school year. The report, of course, recommends the construction of a new middle school to open during the 2018-19 school year.

RRMM relied on FutureThink enrollment projections and some of the school division's own research and reporting. RRMM's report said the nine elementary schools will reach their collective capacity by 2019-2020, and by 2023-2024, James River, Rawls Byrd and Matthew Whaley will be short 52 seats for students while the other six schools combined would have a 151-seat surplus. The architects recommended temporary classroom trailers, building additions or rezoning to cope with the shortfall, but said a new school would allow each school to operate at 95 percent capacity while limiting the rezoning needed to find enough space for all the students.

Similarly, RRMM said the high schools will reach their collective capacity during the 2021-2022 school year, and will be short nearly 300 seats by 2023-24. Classroom trailers and rezoning were possible options given, but RRMM's ultimate recommendation was building additions at the high schools to support 550 to 600 more students.

When it came to the middle schools one of which is already over capacity, based on enrollment data and the size of the facilities RRMM architects said the three current buildings would collectively be 553 seats short by the 2023-2024 school year.

"You could make up that deficit with classroom trailers or additions," architect Duane Harver said. "With each school having a deficit, rezoning would not be effective. You'd be moving around the negative numbers. ... We're proposing that a 600-seat middle school be constructed by the year 2018-2019 and that would extend your capacity to the ten-year mark and beyond."

Sampson can be reached at 757-345-2345.

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Architects complete 10-year analysis of school space needs