MGT consultants lay out plan
The latest plan for an $869 million makeover of the Hamilton County Schools has Brainerd High School moving to a new 800-student building on the Dalewood Middle site, and includes a new 6-12 building for a combined Tyner High and Middle at the high school site.
MGT Consultants told members of the School Board on Monday afternoon that the latest plan moves the system from 78 schools to 67 schools.
Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences and Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts would eventually get new buildings at sites to be determined.
Sequoyah Vocational School and Hamilton County High School would be retained and there would be a third vocational school at the Barger Elementary site on Brainerd Road at North Moore Road.
Normal Park School would move to the current Center for Creative Arts site - the former Chattanooga High School on Dallas Road.
Center for the Creative Arts and Barger arts students would move to the Brainerd High site. CCA would become a 1,300-student school that is K-12 and state of the art with its performing arts program.
Schools/sites slated to be closed are Alpine Crest Elementary, Clifton Hills Elementary, the Dawn Program, Soddy Daisy Middle School, Rivermont Elementary, and Lakeside Elementary. The current Normal Park schools would go out of use. The Dawn Program would move to Hillcrest Elementary.
Schools to be torn down include Dalewood Middle, Dupont Elementary, Orchard Knob Middle School and the Tyner schools.
Lookout Mountain School would be retained and renovated.
Lookout Valley Elementary would be renovated as would the middle school and high school.
The seven new buildings in the plan are Brainerd High, Tyner High/Middle, CSAS, CSLA, CCA/Barger, the new Barger site vocational school and a new East Hamilton Middle School.
Additional public hearings are to be held.
The final proposal from MGT is to go to the School Board in early March.
Officials said the ambitious plan "won't be completed in one year. It will take at least 10 years."
They also said that members of the public said they favored neighborhood schools and smaller schools.