Construction of the approximately $13 million intermediate school in Vilonia is a week ahead of where it was before a tornado destroyed the school in April, Superintendent David Stephens said.
The intermediate school, which will be named for longtime former superintendent Frank Mitchell of Vilonia, was close to being finished on Mount Olive Road when the April tornado tore through the area. The storm killed 13 people in Faulkner County — eight in Vilonia, including two Vilonia Primary School students.
“We’re right on schedule,” Stephens said. “We’re about a week ahead of where we were this time last year.”
The building was needed because of overcrowding in the district, which has an enrollment of about 3,250 students, Stephens said.
“Yeah, we’re pretty full,” he said.
The intermediate school was designed for 900 students and will open with about 750, Stephens said.
“The intermediate school takes pressure off all the other buildings. It won’t be completed till June; we hope to start moving in July and be open for the next school year,” he said.
Because the school wasn’t finished when it was hit by the tornado, Nabholz Construction had insurance on the building, and the Vilonia School District didn’t have to pay a deductible.
The school is being built on the same spot as the one that was destroyed, Stephens said.
“They were able to salvage the slab, so they’re just building on the same footprint. The design’s the same. We made a couple of changes — minor things, like running gas lines for science labs,” he said.
A major change was installing security doors. Stephens said that in the original design, “you could walk in the front door and go right in the building; walk into the hallway.” Now, “we have some doors that remain locked inside the building so that when parents, or anybody, comes in, they have to check in at the office and be buzzed in.” The main door is open, but visitors enter through a vestibule, where they must check in with an employee at a window before being buzzed in through locked doors to enter the school. “Anytime there is a place with access to students, you have to check in at the office,” Stephens said.
A planned grade reconfiguration, to reduce overcrowding, had to be delayed for a year. The intermediate school will house grades four, five and six, taking the fourth grades out of the primary and elementary schools, which now serve kindergarten through fourth grade. The middle school will house grades seven and eight next year, eliminating the junior high school, “and that will relieve some overcrowding,” Stephens said. The high school will become grades nine through 12 and will separate the grades in two buildings, using the current junior high for grades nine and 10, and the current high school for grades 11 and 12.
Stephens said because of the changes in grade configurations, administrators at each school are working to revamp schedules, bus routes and use of space in the buildings.
“The administrative staff is working on that right now,” he said.
The superintendent, who replaced Mitchell at the beginning of this school year, said staff had also been hired prior to the school being destroyed. Andy Pennington, assistant principal at Vilonia Primary School, was hired as principal of the intermediate school, and Vandy Nash, a reading specialist for the North Little Rock School District, was hired to replace Pennington. Because of the construction delay, Pennington is still in the assistant principal’s role at Vilonia Primary School. Nash said the Vilonia district honored her contract, “and I am working at the primary school as an assistant principal, alongside Andy.”
“She’s playing a key role in some curriculum implementation,” Stephens said. He said Amanda Goers, assistant principal at the middle school, will serve as the assistant principal of the intermediate school this fall.
Furniture that had been ordered for the intermediate school before the tornado destroyed the building is being stored by the company from which the furniture was purchased.
A clock tower that was under construction remained standing through the storm, Stephens said.
“Right now, they’re working on finishing it up and getting it going,” he said. Centennial Bank donated $15,000 to the district to buy an electronic musical instrument for the bell tower.
School-district patrons approved a 1-mill property-tax increase in 2012 to fund the construction project. The state kicked in approximately $9 million for the intermediate school, with the district footing the rest.
Although money was not available to include a safe room inside the building, Stephens said the district is applying to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a grant to provide a safe room as a freestanding structure.
“I think our application is due the first of April,” he said. “Part of the application process explains that where we want to put it, the building was previously destroyed by a tornado.”
Although people commented after the tornado about hallways that were standing at the intermediate school site, Mitchell said in an earlier interview, “That is deceiving.” One hallway received scratches on the wall, which meant anyone in the hallway could have been hurt, and the other hallway had damage to the doors and wasn’t built with safe-room specifications, he said. That would have entailed windowless steel doors. Mitchell said a safe room large enough for the school would have been cost-prohibitive.
“We did well enough to build a building the size of it,” he said.
Mitchell, whose 74th birthday is Feb. 6, gets to name the school. Board members voted to name it in his honor but left the exact wording up to him.
“We haven’t done that formally; I need to do that,” he said when contacted Friday. “I’ve thought of a lot of different things, but probably ‘Frank Mitchell Intermediate,’” he said. Mitchell also has a doctorate, but said he probably won’t use that title.
“I think everybody will narrow it down to ‘Mitchell’ because that’s a pretty long title, or just ‘Mitchell Intermediate,’” he said. “That’s a lot for a kid that age,” Mitchell said, referring to the full name.
Mitchell said he would like a photograph of himself inside the school somewhere — nothing too big, but one that will last.
“I think it would be good to have something like that because kids, pretty quickly, won’t know who I am,” Mitchell said. “I asked if I could have one made with my wife. We’ve been married 50 years (on Friday). She’s always supported me, and you can’t make it in a lot of jobs like this, where you’ve got to move around, unless you’ve got that. … I don’t think they objected to that.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.