Lexington, SC — On Tuesday evening, the Lexington County School District One Board of Trustees accepted the administration’s recommendation to enter into an option agreement for one parcel of land for a new school south of Red Bank. The parcel of land is approximately 35 acres.
The property is intended for the site of a new elementary school that hasn’t been named yet. The school would be in the White Knoll attendance area and students would eventually feed into White Knoll High School. The property includes access from both South Lake Drive and Bluefield Road.
The board’s action to accept the administration’s recommendation to enter this agreement is just the first of many steps necessary before a school is built and opened. The purchase of property for a school site is a very specialized and intricate process. For instance, there are many South Carolina Department of Education, South Carolina Department of Transportation, and Lexington County guidelines that impact the purchase of land for a school site.
The first thing district administrators do when looking at a piece of land is to determine the best location for the land purchase. They must decide if the location of the property meets the district’s current and future needs for property in that area.
The South Carolina Department of Transportation requires that a traffic study take place and they determine which intersections and roads are to be looked at in that study. lt anticipates traffic after the school is built and determines the types of road improvements that would be needed around the new school.
The district pays a traffic-engineering consultant to conduct that study. That study will look at available road frontage, the depth of the property and the ability of the site to provide necessary traffic circulation at the school. It is important that there’s room for stacking of automobiles, a term used to describe cars lining up on the school’s property, during peak student drop-off and pick-up times. The district’s leadership believes that the site they’ve chosen will allow quite a bit of room for the lines of cars on site which helps keep the parents and other cars off the roads leading to the school.
Voters approved the district borrowing $365 million through bonds for a five-year building plan (2018–2023) in November of 2018. The construction of a new elementary school in the White Knoll attendance area was a part of that plan. This school will ensure that the district can continue to offer its students the facilities they need now and, in the future, according to a recent press release.
The district has developed a webpage that allows the public to keep up with the progress of their construction projects. This site enables residents to see what is currently happening at their child’s school and includes “before” photographs, the current phase taking place, photographs of that progress, etc.
That website can be accessed by clicking this link: DISTRICT ONE BUILDING
