They mostly avoided the issue

of how best to pay for it, but members of the Fayette County Board of

Education heard convincing evidence Saturday for the need to build a new

middle school and three new elementary schools as part of the next five-year

construction program.

With the Fayette County Commission

eyeing a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax to fund its $400 million

long-range road building campaign, it's likely the school board will

settle on a bond referendum on November's general election ballot,

though nothing has been made official.

Fayette voters have twice defeated

SPLOST issues to fund school construction; they last approved a bond referendum

in 2000, which funded three elementary schools and Whitewater High, opening

in August.

A SPLOST vote that failed in

1999 included an additional middle school, but that was removed from the

2000 bond referendum, said Superintendent John DeCotis. The result: Fayette

County is short an entire middle school.

The district already owns land

adjacent to Cleveland Elementary on Lester Road in the middle of the county,

where the new middle school is targeted.

The three new elementary schools

would include Centennial Elementary, already earmarked for a tract of

land off McDuff Parkway in Peachtree City donated by developer John Wieland.

It's across the road from his Centennial development, north of Wynnmeade.

Another would be located in

the Tyrone area, to relieve Tyrone and Burch elementaries, and the third

would be built somewhere in the south-central part of the county, to draw

students away from Sara Harp Minter, Spring Hill and Peeples elementary

schools.

Additions are also proposed

for Peeples and Spring Hill elementary schools. An expansion of Rising

Starr Middle would add four classrooms onto the end of each of the schools'

academic hallways, for a total of 16 new rooms.

Admittedly, the board has some

breathing room, for now.

As of December, just one elementary

school, two middle schools and two high schools were above capacity, and

of those only two, Rising Starr Middle and Fayette County High, were overcrowded

But Jerry Whitaker, planning

director, presented a detailed analysis of current and future projected

needs that showed the elbow room will be short-lived.

Facilities Services Director

Mike Satterfield said it takes about 18 months to complete an elementary

school, and two years to finish a middle school.

The district has grown on average

elementary school every 12 months, he said.

If all housing lots currently

rezoned and approved throughout the county were built out, Whitaker estimates

6,000 more students would be added to the system.

He also applied guesswork on

where large-scale, unannounced developments might go in over the next

five years.

For example, Whitaker figured

500 homesites at a minimum would eventually occupy the 1,000 acres owned

lining up to get the rights to the rolling pastureland in the county's

central section, which the family intends to sell sometime this year.

A 500-home River's Farm

subdivision would bring 1,183 additional students into Fayette County

Schools, Whitaker predicted.

Satterfield also presented

a list of renovations, replacements and upgrades of existing facilities

that could be included in a bond vote, mostly carpet and air conditioning.

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