The Manassas City School Board will be holding a groundbreaking ceremony tomorrow at 1 p.m. in Manassas, on the site of the new Baldwin Elementary and Intermediate schools.
The two schools will be built on the same site and will accommodate the growth of students in Manassas City, according to a release.
Manassas City Public Schools recently awarded the construction contract for the projects to Schiebel Construction out of Huntington, Maryland, according to Jeff Abt, the Executive Director of Student and Administrative Support Services for the school system.
Additionally, Abt was a former principal at the original Baldwin Elementary School from 1997 to 2005.
“This has been a twenty plus year idea…so getting to where we are now is just really exciting. It’s taken a long time getting there, but we’re now building a school where the…building is very flexible,” said Abt.
The project will cost just over $32 million in construction costs, which is being paid through bond funds, according to Abt.
“[This] will help with our overcrowding in our current intermediate school. The school will be approximately 1,000 students, 700 for [kindergarten through fourth grade] and 300 for the [fifth and sixth grade]…It’s going to replace our existing Baldwin Elementary School. It was a building that was built in 1958. And the new school is being relocated on Tudor Lane next to our high school,” Abt said.
According to initial design plans for the project, the site will have two distinct entrances, with PreK through fourth grade on the elementary side, and grades 5-6 on the intermediate side.
The elementary and intermediate school will be split up on each side of the site, but there will be some shared space between students, including the gymnasium.
Abt stated that the school would be built with the latest technology, with today’s learners in mind.
“What this school [will have] is learning neighborhoods outside of each floor – it’s three floors. And there’s a lot of glass, so that a teacher can have a small group outside of the classroom, and still be able to see them, with a larger group within the classroom,” said Abt, continuing, “Our computer labs will literally be in the learning neighborhoods. They won’t be in a room, like you would traditionally think with a computer lab. There will be a multitude of smart boards in the neighborhoods, potentially monitors in the neighborhoods. So it’s going to be tons of technology.”
The project is scheduled for completion by January 2017, but there are hopes that it will be completed sooner.
“[We have] hopes of potentially moving in sooner. The construction company would like to see if they can accelerate the construction of the project,” said Abt.
The groundbreaking ceremony is open to the public.
