Barrow to break ground on new eastside middle school today

Barrow County school officials are breaking ground on a $13.2 million replacement building for Winder-Barrow Middle School today in Statham.

The Barrow County Board of Education will host a ground-breaking ceremony at the school’s future home on Jefferson Street, near Statham Elementary, at 1 p.m. today.

“This middle school has been on the books for quite a while,” said Superintendent Wanda Creel. “So now we’re just ready to get it started.”

The new building, which will be built with local sales tax funds and money provided by the state Department of Education, should be open by March 2013, Creel said.

Students who matriculate through the new Statham middle school, which officials have yet to name, will join children who’ve attended Winder’s Russell Middle School in ninth grade at Winder-Barrow High School, Creel said.

School district administrators have been planning for almost a decade to move Winder-Barrow Middle School, which now is housed in the 1955 school building on King Street in Winder, into the new school building to save on operating, repair and maintenance costs at the well-worn facility.

The new building also will be larger and have a more modern layout, Creel said.

The current facility, which originally was home to the county’s segregation-era black elementary and high schools, was built in 1955 to accommodate 100 students. School district leaders expanded the building in 1958, 1974, 1978 and 1989 to make room for the growing student population.

The building is now rated for 500 students, but houses 730 students by utilizing 11 portable classrooms.

“It’s an old building, and it has been extremely well-loved,” Creel said. “It does have what we call ‘learning cottages’ — otherwise known as portable classrooms. ... It’s just time to get a facility that’s more economical, in terms of all the things we need to replace, in terms of the size of the school and in terms of the equipment in the school.”

The new building will be modeled loosely after Haymon Morris Middle School, which school leaders opened in 2005, and will be able to house up to 1,200 students.

That should give the school district some breathing room as student populations continue to grow, Creel said.

Statham Mayor Robert Bridges has continued to see the number of young people in Statham grow over the past decade and hopes having the new middle school close by will give longtime residents and transplants a new sense of community.

“I think it’s outstanding that we’re getting a middle school there,” Bridges said. “I think it will kind of knit the town together.”