Piute County School District is designing two new elementary schools to replace Circleville and Oscarson. That process jumped forward this month when the special bond election passed by three votes.
The November 2024 special bond election passed 471 votes to 468, allowing the school district to receive a lease revenue bond to pay for the schools.
The votes were canvassed and approved in the Piute County School Board meeting on November 12. This brought applause from members of the school board, who have been trying since last summer to move this project ahead.
The current preliminary design for Circleville Elementary has 11 classrooms, each around 800 square feet, including individual rooms for art/music, kindergarten, and preschool. Special education and English language learning would each have their own room a little smaller than a normal classroom. The square footage of the library was not specified, but the space set aside would fall somewhere around 600 square feet.
The preliminary design for Oscarson is six classrooms, including art/music, special education, kindergarten, and preschool. It also includes a 583-square-foot library.
Changes are still being made to both designs.
Superintendent Koby Willis indicated in an earlier news article that the special education rooms and the libraries were some of the new schools’ most important additions. Modern safety designs for fire suppression, earthquake resistance, and electricity obviously do not show up in preliminary designs, but they are also a priority later in the process.
The school board is planning to break ground on both elementary schools in June 2025. Students would then begin classes there in fall of 2026.
Piute County School Board will hold separate meetings Thursday, November 21, at 6:00 p.m. in both Marysvale and Circleville to discuss the designs. The purpose of the meetings is to explain the floor plans to the public and take comments before plans get too far along to change.
– by Abbie Call, The Byway
Feature image caption: A preliminary rendering of the new Circleville Elementary School by KMA Architects as of November 11, 2024. Piute County School Board will be showing these and floor plan designs to the local public on November 21, 2024. Designs could still change significantly.
Abbie Call – Cannonville/Kirksville, Missouri
Abbie Call is a journalist and editor at The Byway. She graduated in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in editing and publishing from Brigham Young University. Her favorite topics to write about include anything local, Utah’s megadrought, and mental health and meaning in life. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hanging out with family, quilting and hiking.
Find Abbie on Threads @abbieb.call or contact her at [email protected].