TOOELE — From bonds to bricks, new schools and additions are going up all along the Wasatch Front but in few places faster than in Tooele County, where a $50 million building budget is taking shape.
The Tooele valley was rattled in the late 1990s with double-digit residential growth percentages, and the rate is still about 7 percent. The Tooele County School District's student population is currently expanding by about 4 percent annually.
"Tooele County continues to grow rapidly because of in-migration and high birthrates," said Tooele Superintendent Larry Shumway.
Overcrowding was an increasing concern, and voters responded with a $49.5 million bond, the largest in that district's history.
In return, three new elementary schools are due to be completed over the summer, two on Tooele's north side, where the growth is concentrated, and one in Grantsville. Each building will house about 650 students — two extra classrooms were added to each building without spending more money.
Close to half the bond money is going into Tooele High School, where classes are held while the rebuilding takes place on site, saving money on land-acquisition costs. The same thing is happening in Murray.
Tooele High will shed 10 portable classrooms in exchange for 10 permanent rooms. Enrollment is at 1,450, and capacity at the new school will be 1,600. Shumway called the school "antiquated," with many of the rooms having only one electrical outlet.
An existing $8 million auditorium at the site was spared demolition. The new school should be ready by midsession for the 2002-03 school year.
Grantsville High School has already moved into a new 16-classroom addition.
If the district maintains its current growth rate, it will be looking at funding for additional elementary schools, a new junior high and a third high school in the valley.
"That appears to be something we'll need," Shumway said. "You just don't know what could happen."
Elsewhere along the Wasatch Front, other schools are undergoing capital improvements:
Murray School District is ahead of schedule on its $25 million rebuild of its sole high school. Workers are replacing Murray High's football field bleachers. Masonry is up for the auditorium, administrative offices and choral and band rooms, whose students have been meeting in an old car showroom on its expanded campus, district special services director Jim Cooper said. Structural steel is going up for classrooms.
The school is expected to be completed by May 2003; the old building then will be demolished and grounds work completed by October. The Murray Education Foundation, meanwhile, is selling personalized, old school bricks for $100 (businesses pay $500) and will display them in the new school. Proceeds benefit a school technology endowment.
Jordan School District is beginning work on a $6.6 million elementary school near 9000 South and 5600 West, to be completed by May 2003.
Workers are putting finishing touches on three Salt Lake elementaries, constructed under a $136 million bond.
Mountain View and Backman students will move into rebuilt schools in the fall. A new elementary school will open at the same time near 900 North and Redwood Road. The district also will begin retrofitting Edison Elementary in April, and break ground on a new Nibley Park Elementary in May.
Buildings after that are somewhat in the air. The school board is examining how to proceed in light of closing Lowell and Rosslyn Heights elementaries.
Contributing: Jennifer Toomer-Cook.
E-MAIL: sspeckman@desnews.com