Some four years after its opening, Collierville High already is facing some growing pains and has plans for a new 29,500-square-foot expansion.
When the new campus opened in 2018, there were about 2,773 pupils. By the fall of 2019 that number grew to 2,812, and in 2020, it had 2,884. This year the number has dipped slightly.
The high school was the largest in Tennessee when it opened, an endeavor exceeding $100 million. But even with its opening, expansion was anticipated. Wings on the southwest side of the 450,000 square-foot building were constructed with the intention of more space in future years, Chairman Wright Cox noted recently.
Construction should begin this summer with the added space containing classrooms and a flight simulator among other needs. The board is working with Linkous Construction and the Renaissance Group. The total cost is estimated at about $7.8 million, about $2.8 million more than the board originally anticipated. Rusty Linkous, president of Linkous Construction, said the higher cost is not because of any problems with the design and is not unique to the local market.
“This is an unprecedented time in costs and supply chain issues, ” Linkous told board members Tuesday, adding a volatile market is contributing to the cost issues.
The biggest construction-related increases are electrical services, mechanical equipment, drywall and masonry. Some materials aren’t arriving until 12 months after they are ordered, according to Perry Miller, Linkous director of operations.
Linkous would like to begin work as soon as students leave for the summer. Work won’t be complete by the time students return in August, but any disruptive activities will shift to breaks or weekends. The company is looking to move furniture into the new space in November of 2023 and the space may be utilized soon after that. However, with supply issues none of the dates are exact.
Collierville purposefully chose its 155-acre campus site on the south side of town knowing future expansion was possible. With plenty of annexation room south of the high school, there is significant potential for growth in school population.
As the district considered the possibility of moving the high school to a new site, it asked Scott Fleming, architect with Fleming Architects, to assess the former high school building — now West Collierville Middle School. Expanding it to accommodate 3,000 students wasn’t possible.
“They’ve always said ‘One town. One school.’ so they didn’t want to do two high schools,” Fleming said.
So they looked for a new site and found about two dozen in Collierville with acreage accommodating the list of desires for academics and athletics before narrowing it down to five properties throughout the town.
“They were all kind of scattered, but we were very open-minded,” Fleming recalled.
The sites were given a grade based on various criteria such as vehicular access and drainage with future growth of the town in mind.
The land where the school sits now — formerly owned by Bob Cartwright — scored the highest.
By opening a new campus, Collierville closed Schilling Farms Middle School and opened West Collierville Middle at the old high school. Schilling Farms was transformed into the district’s sixth elementary school.
All along, the district has known as the town grows, so will its high school.
“We knew we were going to have a school built for 3,000 students, but the trajectory is the school will continue to grow,” Fleming said. “It’s wiser to go ahead and land bank (additional acres) and give the town the flexibility a generation from now.”
He complimented the board’s wisdom and foresight for their needs then but also in the future.
The district earmarked $5 million of its federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund funds for the expansion, but some other projects with those dollars were under budget. The district will likely pay for about $6.9 million of the project with federal funding and the rest though its capital improvement budget.