New Schools Discussed at Community Meetings
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
The Darlington County School District held public meetings last week to discuss plans for the construction of three new elementary schools in the Darlington, Hartsville, and Lamar areas.
The schools will be financed through a $60 million general obligation bond, which is funded by the one-percent sales tax county voters approved in the 2016 general elections. The new schools will replace aging facilities that are each more than fifty years old.
Darlington’s new school will combine Brunson-Dargan Elementary and Cain Elementary, and the new facilities will be built on the current Cain site, located on 1st Street.
In Hartsville, the new school will combine Washington Street Elementary School and West Hartsville Elementary School. The new facilities will be built on Bay Road between Bobo Newsom Highway and Westwinds Drive.
Lamar Elementary School and Spaulding Elementary will be combined into a new facility on the Lamar Highway, just across from Country Club Road.
At the community meeting held March 27 in Lamar, citizens asked questions about plans for their new school. The man who will oversee building of all three facilities, Dale Collier, president of Brownstone Construction Group, did his best to answer their concerns.
Collier said that when selecting sites for construction, several conditions had to be met: the owner had to be willing to sell; the site had to offer adequate acreage for building, play areas, parking, and roads; the land had to be appropriate (no wetlands, soil that could support the building, no environmental contaminants); the site must have enough frontage to offer separate car and bus loop roads and a separate fire loop for emergencies; the speed limit on access roads had to be acceptable; and all adjacent roads needed to be able to support the anticipated traffic increases.
The Lamar site they chose, a 52.33 acre plot that was at one time used as farmland, met all these requirements. Collier noted that the pros for the site included good visibility, a convenient Hwy 401 location, no wetlands and favorable soil conditions. Cons included the distance from the town center, but Collier said there was no suitable building site available within the Lamar town limits. There are also a few homes adjacent to the site.
This school, like the ones in Hartsville and Darlington, will have a $20 million program budget. The Lamar school will host Pre-K through 5th Grade in an 80,000 square foot facility that features high ceilings, lots of natural light, a multi-purpose room and performance space, and new security features (such as lockdown buttons to close and secure all doors) to help keep students and faculty safe.
Collier said the facilities in Lamar and Hartsville would be “essentially identical schools,” which offers an economic advantage and savings on design fees. He added that input is being gathered from faculty and staff as far as specific program needs for each school, because those needs can still be factored in when designers are allocating interior space.
Guests at the Lamar meeting queried Collier and his design chief about potential traffic issues, which they said would be minimal due to a long allocation of “run up” road between the highway and the dual-covered canopy where students will board cars on one side and buses on the other. One parent suggested Brownstone needed to confer with the District about possible conflicts that can arise when students have two different dismissal times in one school day, and Collier agreed to look into that.
Collier noted that there should be a turning lane built on Hwy 401 (Lamar Highway) and he does not foresee the need to install a traffic light there. He added that such a determination would be made by SCDOT based on traffic volume along that road.
The Lamar site includes a vacant space beside the planned new school footprint which could be used for future expansion of the Lamar Elementary School, or even construction of a separate school in the future.
Collier estimated construction of the new facilities in Lamar and Hartsville should begin in December of 2018 and be completed within one year. The logistics of whether to move students into these new schools during the school year have not yet been worked out, though Collier observed that most school districts prefer not to leave the new buildings unoccupied while waiting for a new school year to begin.