Fayetteville School District zeroes in on land for next school

FILE PHOTO The Fayetteville Public Schools McClinton Administration Building.
FILE PHOTO The Fayetteville Public Schools McClinton Administration Building.

FAYETTEVILLE -- School District administrators Thursday revealed where they hope to build the district's next school.

The 27-acre site is on the west side of town along North Rupple Road one mile south of Owl Creek School.

Growth

Here’s the Fayetteville School District’s enrollment growth over the past five years. Numbers are from Oct. 1 of each year.

2019: 10,487

2018: 10,334

2017: 10,017

2016: 9,864

2015: 9,652

Source: Arkansas Department of Education

Administrators presented the site to the School Board during a special board meeting. The board will be asked at its next meeting May 28 to approve buying the property for about $1.8 million, or $66,666 per acre, from the Koenig Reserve. The property is undeveloped.

Officials are following through to build a school on the district's west side, part of a broader $111 million facility plan made possible by voters' approval in February to restructure some of the district's bond issues.

Land acquisition was among the items to be paid for through the bond restructuring.

The school will be either an elementary or a middle school. The district's goal is to open the school by August 2023, said Megan Slocum, associate superintendent.

Much of the district's growth is on its west side. The area surrounding the property is largely undeveloped, but is growing quickly.

"There's bulldozers all over the place," said Nika Waitsman, board president.

Slocum said the west side of Rupple Road, opposite the property, has a lot of homes being built. Most of Rupple has been expanded over the past decade into a four-lane road.

"So one of the things we wanted to think about on the front end is how do we get students from one side of the road to the other side if they want to walk to school," Slocum said.

The property is bordered by Rupple on the west and South Dinsmore Trail on the east. It's less than half a mile north of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Slocum said if the board gives her the authority in two weeks to sign a contract on the land, she would expect closing on the deal to happen as soon as the following day.

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Land purchase

NW News on 05/15/2020

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