Five years after outraged teachers, parents and students complained to the school board about abysmal conditions at 61-year-old Clarke Middle School, a handsome, brand-new building welcomed students last Thursday, Aug. 1. Clarke Middle now has a state-of-the art HVAC, bright, wide hallways and—unlike the demolished school—no visible roaches.
“This is just phase one,” said John Gilbreath, who was smiling ear-to-ear at the positive reception the Baxter Street school was receiving from visitors at an open house July 30. Gilbreath coordinates capital projects funded by CCSD’s e-SPLOST initiatives. Phase two of the building, expected to be finished in January, includes a gymnasium, administration offices, rooms for professional learning and a health clinic.
Each grade is housed primarily on one floor, with eighth grade classrooms on the bottom floor and sixth grade on the top. Connections—art and music, French and Spanish language instruction, agricultural and family and consumer sciences—are shared, with students going from floor to floor.
The cafeteria can accommodate more than 500 people. It also features a stage, a huge screen and a projector system. The building has 72 classrooms for instruction. The school greenhouse and barn are set up, as are garden areas and a soccer field. Including Alps Elementary School next door, the site is 50 acres.
After touring each of the school’s three floors, the science labs, the huge cafeteria and media center at the open house, seventh grade friends Mica Suiza and Natalie Zakharau said they especially liked the “clean bathrooms,” which come with an ample number of working stalls and an automatic sink. Last year, students were housed in huge trailers while construction was underway, but they sometimes had to venture into the old building, where they encountered “very gross” bathrooms with broken pipes and memorable odors.
In 2019, then-superintendent Demond Means estimated the cost of building a new middle school at $25–28 million. Five years later, the final price tag has almost doubled to $55 million. Local builder Grahl Construction is the contractor, and the architecture firm is Lindsay Pope Brayfield & Associates.
You can see the old school building in piles along Baxter Street. Gilbreath said crews are sorting through the materials, finding metal that can be sent to salvage. Bricks and concrete are taken to different landfills.
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