By MATT LAMB
Staff Writer
For years, the elephant in the room — in terms of size, scope and cost — has been the idea of a new comprehensive high school in Moore County. The Board of Education’s Construction Committee is beginning to explore a series of options to address some significant and ongoing crowding at both Pinecrest and Union Pines high schools.
Despite the district’s current focus on siting and building a new Carthage Elementary, the 2023 prioritized master facility list indicates a significant need to free up capacity at the high schools. With a hefty price tag and series of logistical concerns at the forefront of the conversation, Assistant Superintendent Jenny Purvis recently outlined four ways forward.
Pinecrest was constructed for 1,650 students but currently has an enrollment of 2,285. Union Pines was built for 1,068 students but has a student population of 1,392. With that in mind, the district would need to make space for 959 students for both schools to return to their intended capacities.
In 2015, the district completed a series of plans to expand and modernize both Pinecrest and Union Pines. Those studies did not alter the schools’ core — cafeterias, libraries, administrative areas and other specialized spaces — but, rather, added classrooms or more seating.
According to Purvis, if the district were to implement the 2015 plans, it could add around 900 seats, so that as soon as the improvements were completed, the high schools would still require more capacity.
Considering school construction is often based on future projections, Purvis said that in a decade, Union Pines and Pinecrest will collectively need 1,515 additional seats. She added that each school’s core space is insufficient to handle that sort of growth.
As for Purvis’ courses of action, the first option would be to modernize and renovate both schools, all while expanding their core spaces to accommodate future growth. Pinecrest’s core would need to be extended to accommodate 2,600 students, and Union Pines would require space for 1,750 students.
Other options all involve building a new high school. They include:
- Constructing a new school with 1,700 seats, while still renovating Pinecrest and Union Pines. Pinecrest would maintain an enrollment of 1,650, and Union Pines would have 1,068
- Build a 1,400-seat school, but with a core that could handle 1,700 students, allowing for future growth. This choice would enable the addition of 300 seats within the next five to six years. Again, Pinecrest and Union Pines would be modernized and renovated, maintaining their originally intended enrollments.
- Build a 1,400-seat school with a matching core capacity. Pinecrest would be renovated to maintain an enrollment of 1,650, while Union Pines would receive an addition that could hold up to 1,500 students. This option would create some parity among the schools.
“The fourth option — programmatically — creates some consistency across the three high schools when you are talking athletics, arts and academics,” said Superintendent Tim Locklair. “It may be in the same athletic conference, for example, that sort of thing. So, it’s an interesting thought to do that kind of thing.”
Purvis added that it would be a far lighter lift to expand Union Pines as opposed to Pinecrest. “From a logistical standpoint of the location of those cores and the land that’s usable around it, it’s much easier to expand that core.”
While the capital development process is complex, school assignments must also be considered. Regardless of size, any new high school would require district-wide reassignment plans.
“It has the possibility of breaking up feeder patterns from elementary to middle,” said Locklair. “And middle (school), you’re going to have the possibility of additional split feeder patterns from middle to high; it may be unavoidable.”
The district would need to conduct another study examining areas of growth and demographics throughout the county, which would likely change where at least some students would attend school.
On the cost side, the master facility list estimates the modernization and renovation of both high schools, along with the construction cost of a new school, to be between $290 million and $320 million.
In 2020, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction reported that the average construction cost for a North Carolina school was approximately $249 per square foot. More recently, though, several North Carolina school projects have topped $500 per square foot. The new 2,200-seat Felton Grove High School in Wake County, set to open in August, has an estimated price tag of just over $152 million.
Regardless of the direction the district ultimately takes, Construction Committee Chair David Hensley wants to see his fellow committee members become subject matter experts on the potential courses of action. Alongside schools staff, committee members, with consideration of the district’s 2015 high school plans, will develop a series of pros and cons for each option before taking the presentation to the full school board.
“It’s important that the committee members be duty experts on it,” Hensley said. “So, our challenge is, Dr. (Amy) Dahl, yourself, and Dr. (Robin) Calcutt, we need to be experts.”
Having fleshed out each high school option, the committee hopes to reconvene in May to review the refined products.
In other committee updates, the district has teamed with Tim Venjohn, a broker with Rhodes and Co., to assist in the search for a parcel for the new Carthage Elementary School. Concurrently, while looking for land, the district will be putting out a request for qualifications for architectural services for the new school.
If the district identifies a parcel and hires an architect, funding for that would come from money the district receives from the state lottery. The district currently has over $5 million in lottery funding that would need to be approved as an expenditure by the County Board of Commissioners.
Contact Matt Lamb at (910) 693-2479 or mlamb@thepilot.com.
