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New
Community High School
To Be Built At Unionville
By Glenda Dyer
Like many schools in Middle Tennessee, Community High School at Unionville has run out of space because so many families have moved into the area.
Since 1997 when the high school moved into the existing building, enrollment for grades 7-12 has increased from 404 students to 641 or about 59 percent. During this time period, the elementary school kindergarten through 6th grade enrollment has also jumped from 567 to 812 students.
"This has been a trend since I came here, and this is my ninth year," high school Principal Robert Ralston said. "We are continuing to grow, and it doesn’t look like it is going to slow down anytime soon."
Ralston said that while growth is good it has forced the school to look at multiple ways for fitting everyone into the present building.
"We have classes going on in the auditorium, and teachers sharing classrooms in a variety of different methods," he said. "Just to be real frank we are squeezing pretty tight in here."
Not only are the inside spaces feeling the crunch, but the playing and practice fields are crowded too, Ralston said, noting the school continues to expand its sports and band programs.
Relief for the overcrowding could be in place by the opening of the 2009 school year when a new high school is expected to be completed on a totally new campus. The proposed new campus is located about a half mile away from the present K-12th grade complex.
The current Community School complex on Highway 41-A consists of two schools, sharing only a cafeteria. One portion is for kindergarten through 6th grade, and the other is for 7th through 12th grades. Each side has its own principal and faculty.
The new high school will be for grades 9-12 and will front on Unionville-Deason Road, which runs on the south side of the present school campus. Once these four grades move out, the remaining K-8 students can spread out into the existing facility.
The Bedford County Board of Education bought about 90 acres of land from members of the Leland Brothers Sr. family for the high school and sports fields. Brothers was a former Bedford County Board of Education member and his family has continued to be supportive of Community’s schools, current board member Ronnie Adcock said.
The board also bought another acreage on Highway 41-A from Jimmy Lamb to also provide access from that highway to the school.
Adcock and fellow board member, Amy Martin, presented the high school building plans to alumni members at their annual meeting on Oct. 21.
Adcock outlined how much the current school campus falls short of the recommended acreage. According to a rule of thumb about schools, an elementary, middle school and high school the size of Community’s schools should have campuses totaling about 85 to 90 acres.
"Right now, we have three schools, an elementary, a middle school and a high school on 33 acres," he said.
Current plans are for the new school to be located toward the front of the 90 acres instead of in a wooded area at the back of the property as originally discussed, Martin said.
"We found that if we brought the building to the front of Unionville-Deason Road, we would save about $1 million on developing the property," she said.
The proposed plan calls for two classroom wings to be built on each side of a central core. The central part will house the gymnasium, cafeteria and auditorium.
Martin said present plans call for only one of the classroom wings to be built at this time, and the other wing to be built when it is needed. One classroom wing will accommodate about 550 students, and grades 9-12 now have a total of about 400 students.
The core portion, which includes the gymnasium, cafeteria and auditorium, is designed for 800 to 1,000 students.
"We are building that for 800 to 1,000 students because we feel like we will eventually be there," Martin said.
The gymnasium will seat 1,600 and will be similar to the design of the Eagleville High School gymnasium with a balcony on one end, Martin said.
The auditorium will seat 400. A factor used by the board is that a theater should be able to hold half of a school’s student body.
An estimated $12 million cost has been discussed for the new Community High School but Adcock expects that the school as it is now planned may cost more.
The $12 million is estimated to cover the proposed school building minus the expansion classrooms. It will not cover the costs of outside athletic facilities.
"Amy and I have set as a goal, realizing how much money we have, to have a building and a football field minus the stands," Adcock said. He also added an access road to 41-A to the list of priorities.
Adcock indicated school leaders will look for alternatives, such as community support groups, to help meet some of the other needs. He noted that new bleachers are being erected at the current campus by county jail inmate labor using materials furnished by Andy Haynes and the school’s Quarterback Club.
Bleachers were recently completed by a similar method at Central High School in Shelbyville, using inmate labor and donated materials.
"It hurts me to know that we can’t complete the whole project here (at Community) at this time," Bedford County Commissioner Jimmy Patterson said in an interview after the alumni meeting.
He indicated the county is behind in building more schools to meet the present growth.
"Right now, we are just trying to catch up," he said.
Adcock said the Community High School project is expected to come up for bids by January with construction to begin about March. The goal is to have the school complete when school starts in the fall of 2009.
Community High School has been at its current location since 1925, when a wood school was built to serve students from the surrounding communities. Sometime later, elementary school classes were added.
The old building was torn down in about 1939 and a 10-room brick school was built at a cost of $46,000.
The school expanded several times over the next decades with additions being built in 1946, 1954 and 1955. Community School underwent a major renovation in 1975. At that time, 13 classrooms were added as well as areas for business, science, shop and home economics classes. Rooms for offices were added and a library.
By 1975, the school campus consisted of 15.48 acres.
The latest renovation to the school was completed in 1997. In that year, the school was split, resulting in two schools designed to serve students from kindergarten to graduation.
Since 1975, an additional 18 acres has been added to the original campus.