Innovation school right on time

Peachtree – Cherokee County’s new School of Innovation & Technology remains on track for a summer 2023 opening.

In spite of ongoing nationwide supply chain issues, Cherokee County Schools Superintendent Jeana Conley said she was not aware of any impacts upon the facility’s construction process.

The new structure will house two existing schools – Tri-County Early College High School and The Oaks Academy alternative school – as well as the Career Academy, which will offer vocational opportunities for students from all Cherokee County high schools.

Conley said the new facility provides a more efficient setup for the school system.

“What it will effectively do is take our two smallest populations and bring them together, not only in a way that offers more opportunities to all of the students involved, including all of the students in Cherokee County, but it will be far more efficient,” Conley said.

“We’ll be running buses to the same location, we’ll be utilizing the same cafeteria, and we’ll be sharing a lot of resources, so it should bring about significant cost savings over the separate buildings we’re running right now.”

The 27-acre site is just off U.S. 64 East, near Tri-County Community College’s main campus. By state law, an Early College must be contiguous to a community college.

The Career Academy will offer programs such as mechatronics – an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the integration of mechanical, electronic and electrical engineering systems – and a state-of-the-art construction management degree in cooperation with Tri-County that encompasses construction, wood shop, carpentry and contracting.

Military Science also will be available, which Conley described as Cherokee County’s version of ROTC. The superintendent said official ROTC programs in several other counties are defunct because they were unable to find program leaders with all of the required qualifications.

“We’re going to have a career technology education pathway in military science, but we can hire our own retired military person to run it the way we want to, and it will run along the very same lines,” Conley said.

The $20 million School of Innovation & Technology is being funded by $15 million provided by the state and an additional $5 million from sales tax funds that had already been set aside for the project.

“This is being built at zero burden to the tax base of Cherokee County,” Conley said.

The new facility is being developed by Wells & West Inc. of Murphy, one of the largest contractors in the Southeast. The company’s bid received unanimous approval from the county’s seven-member board of education during a design-bid-build process.

“We knew we had $20 million, and any money we did not spend would have to go back to the state,” Conley said. “We didn’t want to leave any on the table.

“When you do design-bid, you throw it out there for the architects and contractors and say, ‘What can you give us for that?’ The team that was able to provide the most as far as square footage and opportunities for our students was Wells & West.”

Wells & West recently built the new Hayesville Primary School in neighboring Clay County.

The School of Innovation & Technology is not tied to a potential consolidated high school for Cherokee County, but the property its located on could accommodate that type of facility in the future.

“When we purchased the property, we tried to be mindful of future needs,” Conley said. “The property was purchased with the potential for a unified high school.”