By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | Two new smaller “relief” high schools in the Norcross and Meadowcreek clusters are expected to come on board in the next two years. Both are to be different types of high schools, aimed at giving students a different approach to the high school experience.
The Norcross cluster school will open in the fall of 2017, while the Meadowcreek cluster school will open in the fall of 2018. Both schools will be available for students only within their attendance zones. Neither schools will have an athletic program. Neither school have been named as yet.
The focus of both schools will be different from regular high schools. The new Norcross high school, already under construction at 5850 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, just south of the Wingate Hotel. It will be a STEM school (Science, Technical, Engineering and Math). It will have enrollment for up to 1,500 students. There will also be a fine arts wing. Some of the instruction will be with an entrepreneur focus. There will be drawing and design labs, and an emphasis for partnerships with local area high technology firms. This is to give students a look at what they might want to do in their careers, and how to get to that point.
Bowen and Watson of Toccoa is the project manager, with a projected budget of $37.5 million.
The Meadowcreek cluster relief high school site has not been determined yet. It will also house up to 1,500 students, and will have a focus on the health sciences, to enable these students to focus their careers on the various elements of the health sciences. It, too, will have blended personalized learning instruction for students, plus classroom instruction and no athletic teams.. School officials are working on the design of this school now.
HURRAH, HURRAH, HURRAH: Gwinnett County’s upcoming SPLOST vote is now on a reasonable schedule. This November Gwinnettians will vote on whether to continue the one cent sales tax collection for county infrastructure. This coincides with the presidential election voting, which many county leaders feel is the best time to test the sentiment of the people on this important issue, since the most people vote during presidential elections.
It’s the line that Abraham Lincoln believed: “Trust the people; always trust the people.”
It was in 1995, not an election year, that the only SPLOST vote lost, and by only 329 votes, with only 36,403 people voting that year. The county came back the next year, in 1996, with 159,903 voting, and passed the new SPLOST by a 53-47 margin. And no SPLOST has lost since in Gwinnett.
The current SPLOST went in with a 58-42 margin in 2013. It’s on target to collect $453 million within its three year cycle. Collections through June, 2016 were $328.7 million. It’s amazing what one penny per dollar on every sale can do in a county with 900,000 people! The current SPLOST runs through March of 2017.
It’s good to see the question of extending the SPLOST coming in a year of a major election again.
Follow Us