There’s a change in the terrain along Arkansas 10 in the southern shadow of Pinnacle Mountain and Rattlesnake Ridge.
Robinson Middle School in the Pulaski County Special School District, built in 1959 with classroom wings that open to outdoor hallways, is being replaced with a new facility that will serve as many as 800 sixth- through eighth-graders beginning in August 2018.
The dark-colored steel bones for the 40-classroom, three-story structure are standing tall to the west and south of the current campus that is at 21001 Arkansas 10. The location for the new school was made possible by the removal of a hefty portion of a hillside at the rear of the property and the distribution of that dirt to locations elsewhere on the grounds of the Robinson Middle School/High School complex.
In addition to classrooms, the $40 million brick-and-glass middle school will feature a cafeteria with a stage, music/ band rooms, a second-floor media center that will extend over the school’s front entrance, and “monument stairs” that double as seating for students to congregate and for group presentations. Two gymnasiums — one of which has 12-inch concrete walls and will serve as a tornado shelter for as many as 1,400 people — are other components of the middle school design.
WER Architects/Planners designed the building.
“You don’t know how many people I run into who ask what is happening at Robinson,” Pulaski County Special district Superintendent Jerry Guess said Friday about the construction. “And I go to football games and other events over here where community members are present and they say, ‘We never thought this would happen.’”
Currently, Robinson Middle has an enrollment of 470 students. But Guess and his staff expect the enrollment to rise rapidly in burgeoning west Little Rock and west Pulaski County. While the new school is being built for an enrollment of 800, the enrollment could increase to as many as 1,200 without straining the common spaces such as the cafeteria and gymnasiums.
The middle school and high school will share a new two-story multipurpose building, the pitched-roof silver frame of which has been completed and can be seen by passers-by to the west of the academic tower. The multipurpose building will include locker rooms, coaches’ office space, a seminar room, and a strength and conditioning space — plus a full-size indoor practice field for football, soccer, band performances and other activities.
There is space for additional classrooms on the second floor that can be finished later when needed.
Also part of the middle school/high school complex — in front of the new middle school — is a new football field and track that was completed last summer. Rounding out the activity areas are new baseball and softball fields, both with artificial turf and similarly equipped with a portable pitcher’s mound and spiked, movable bases for maximum flexibility in their use by students of all ages.
Derek Scott, the district’s executive director of operations, said district leaders determined early in the project that it would be cheaper to take out part of the hillside — he calls it a mountain — than to buy additional land in the northwest part of the city. And it was cheaper still, by as much as $3 million, to keep much of the dirt from the hillside for use elsewhere on the junior-senior high complex.
The new softball field, for example, is at a lofty height compared with its surrounding terrain because of dirt reused from the hillside. The added height makes better viewing of the vista that includes Pinnacle Mountain and Rattlesnake Ridge.
In all, work crews hauled or bulldozed about 120,000 cubic yards of dirt and rock from the hillside to other parts of the campus complex and took away about 40,000 cubic yards, said Patrick Schroeder, Baldwin Shell project manager for the site.
The remaining hillside has grass-covered, stair-stepped levels. It will be allowed to fill in naturally with trees to serve as a denser buffer between the school property and the residential neighborhood behind the school, Scott said.
Guess praised Scott for the efforts to rein in costs and make maximum use of all the available spaces.
“We are getting a lot of bang for the buck,” Guess said of the project. “He’s managed to do a dime’s worth of work with a nickel.”
At the same time the district is building Robinson Middle, it is building a new Mills University Studies High School on Dixon Road in the southeast part of Pulaski County. That $40 million project will also be completed for the 2018-19 school year.
The district is paying for the new buildings using $55 million raised by issuing second-lien bonds, $15 million in state desegregation aid and more than $10 million generated by the refinancing of two earlier bond issues.
Lance Levar, principal of Robinson Middle School, said parents and staff at the school are excited and grateful for the project.
“It’s a culmination of desire and wishes they have had for a while,” Levar said. “We feel like we have a building now that matches what we have been doing as far as instruction here and the commitment this community has to this school.
“I tell you I have never been at a middle school that has a [Parent Teacher Organization] that has been as amazing, committed, or organized as the PTO here at Robinson Middle School. I jokingly say this is the only middle school PTO that functions like an elementary PTO.”
The new school will allow for space to accommodate the growth in the school’s band and choir and technology programs, Levar added.