Construction is set to begin on what will be the new home of Emily Gray Junior High School in the Tanque Verde Unified School District.
The new school is scheduled to be open for the start of classes in August.
The new campus will go up on the corner of Tanque Verde Road and Tanque Verde Loop -Â the former home of the original Tanque Verde Elementary School and of the Lew Sorensen Educational Resource Center.
The existing building, located at 4201 N. Melpomene Way, was being used by both the school district and the county, as well as a charter school that was leasing space. The charter school has since moved and the county stopped offering community programs there.
The school district took over those community programs and intends to continue them at the new campus in a designated space.
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The administrative offices will also be located on the new campus.
The cost to construct the building is $11 million, which will be covered by a bond passed last year by district voters. The facility will cover 61,000 square feet.
"We're very fortunate to have the support of the community out here," said Governing Board President Steven Auslander.
The new school has been a long time coming due to overcrowding - Emily Gray shares a campus with Tanque Verde High School. Capacity at the Melpomene campus is 555, but the combined enrollment is 668.
"We've reached the end of what we could do in a combined school arrangement on that campus," Auslander said.
The new campus will be able to serve about 450 seventh- and eighth-graders.
Monique Kornell, mother of sixth-grader Jacob Spier, is pleased her son will be one of the first to take advantage of the new school.
"It's wonderful that he'll be going to middle school in a state-of-the-art facility," she said.
"It's quite a crowded school right now and I was concerned about him being on the same campus as high school students, so the timing couldn't be more perfect."
The high school will assume the exclusive use of the Melpomene campus and classroom space will be added there for future growth.
"We really got a lot of mileage out of what we had, and now we can prepare ourselves for the next generation of Tanque Verde students," Auslander said. "Lots of people in this community went through school here in the same buildings their kids are in now. We're glad to be upgrading our facilities."
If you go
The Tanque Verde Unified School District is holding a groundbreaking ceremony at 11 a.m. Saturday for the new Emily Gray Junior High School. The public is invited and students will participate. The school site is at 2300 N. Tanque Verde Loop, near East Tanque Verde Road.
