Bond Updates

Harvey Clarke Elementary School students selected a new design for its new play structure, in colors incorporating lavender, blue-green and plum. Expected installation is summer 2024. Read more here: https://www.fgsdk12.org/apps/news/article/1916488

On Wed., April 3, 2024, the community helped to officially break ground for the updated campus and new building. Speakers included: FGSD Superintendent Dave Parker; Cornelius City Manager Peter Brandom; long-time resident and former Cornelius Elementary student Norby Chartry; Principal Angella Graves; and students Lexii Torres and Robin Munoz. They touched on the history of the school, back when Mr. Chartry attended and to the 80 years of the current building. The ongoing partnership with the City of Cornelius as well as the support of voters, taxpayers and other community members were cited as critical to this project as well as the modernized education of students for decades to come. View photo highlights on the Cornelius Elementary bond page.

Safety fencing is going up at the back of the campus to prepare for excavation and grading of the area for the new building. The fencing is intended to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering the construction zone - for your safety, please stay out of this area.

FGSD's design consultant, Mahlum Architects, presented the final renderings to staff and parent advisors for the new building that will replace the existing school. View more information about this bond project.

March 3, 2023

We continued our Cornelius Elementary Listening and Learning Sessions and will finish those up with some targeted outreach in the coming weeks.  Flyers will be published soon with the times and locations soon.  To date there have been 14 meetings with over 60 participants that focused on family engagement, special programs, facilities and maintenance, safety and security.  The first planning meeting of the Cornelius Elementary School Design Advisory Group was held last week. This team is led by Mahlum Architect group and members of the committee include district office staff, Cornelius Elementary School staff, Community Members and City of Cornelius Partners.

 

Small groups have begun to look at the scope of needs for the Tom McCall Upper Elementary School track and gym floor and the Neil Armstrong track. Those projects will begin this summer.

 

The safety and security team met and started on a needs assessment district wide.

                 

February 6, 2023

Cornelius Elementary School - Mahlum Architects met with eight leadership students from the 3rd and 4th grade at Cornelius Elementary. Students got to envision their amazing dreams for a new school. The students' favorite places in the school included PE, recess, science, and art. Students' dreams included everything from lots of covered play spaces, more room to move in school, softer surfaces in PE, more security, to a pool, hot tubs, and a restaurant on site! What a great experience to hear from our students on what they value and dream!   

February 3, 2023

The 2022 Bond activity is in full swing. To date, the district has hired the District Owner's Representative, Cornerstone, who will help support the district through all the bond projects. The district and Cornerstone have been meeting weekly for planning meetings.

Cornelius Elementary School - 

Mahlum Architects and the District have been completing listening and learning focus group sessions with representatives from the District and staff from Cornelius Elementary. This has been a very valuable experience in understanding what the needs are in our community and for our students. Monday we will meet with 3rd and 4th grade students at Cornelius to listen to their experiences and hopes and dreams for a new school. 

 

January 26, 2023

The District hosted our first Cornelius Elementary School open house where approximately 100 parents and children attended.  This open house provided information for our community to learn how to be involved in the process along with providing several visioning opportunities for us to learn from our community about their experiences and hopes for our new school.

Along with Community outreach and visioning, we have hired the Architect, Land Survey, Land Use Consultant and Geotech consultants who are necessary to the construct-ability and permit process for designing the new building. 

Next week, we will be publishing the Construction Manager - General Contractor (CM/GC) RFP for the project. Our hope is to bring the contractor on board early to help the District in buildability and to provide real time cost updates through the design process. The CM/GC will be selected in April.

The current plan is to spend this year planning and in design with a start date for construction in 2024. The projected start of school date would be fall 2025!

NAMS and TMC Tracks

This week we met with representatives from each building to discuss challenges with the current tracks and needs for the new tracks. This will help in determining the scope of the projects to go to bid in the upcoming week. These two projects will be completed Summer 2023!

TMC E Gym Floor 

We have engaged with contractors to assess the current gym floor and provide options for the District in moving forward. More to come on this. Construction is anticipated to take place in the summer of 2023!