HES breaks ground on new cafeteria, classroom space
Published 6:02 pm Friday, November 12, 2021
- A groundbreaking was held Wednesday for a new cafeteria and classrooms. The expansion includes 16 new classrooms, office space, and a second lunchroom for the Hanceville campus. The new lunchroom will serve K-5 students. The current lunchroom will serve grades 6-12.
HANCEVILLE — After years of dealing with persistent issues plaguing the county’s oldest occupied school building, Hanceville Elementary School staff and students are a step closer to learning in a newer— and healthier — environment.
School officials officially broke ground Wednesday on a major addition to the school; one that’ll add 16 new classrooms as well as a dedicated cafeteria facility. The addition of a second lunchroom, said county schools superintendent Shane Barnette, will alleviate the tremendous pressure on the existing lunchroom that’s currently shared among Hanceville elementary, middle, and high school students.
“One of the struggles that we’ve had at Hanceville is that we’ve got a very old lunchroom, and the kids have to start eating lunch around 9:45 a.m. every day,” he explained. “It becomes a day-long strain on the current lunchroom and a disruption to the school schedule, just to get everyone, covering K-12, in and out of there each day.”
The new lunchroom will exclusively serve elementary school students, leaving the older facility with the more manageable task of serving students from the high school and middle school. While the county school board has no definite plans for the older school building once the new classrooms are opened, Barnette said new classroom space is long overdue for the elementary school’s student population of more than 600 children.
“They’re actually moving out of the oldest school building in Cullman County, which was built in 1932,” he said. “It’s an 89 year-old building, and it’s been in continuous use ever since it was built. We’ve spent a lot of money over the years just to keep that building open and safe for students, and this project, thankfully, will finally solve that.”
Earlier this year, the Cullman County School Board approved more than $8 million in school improvement projects through a state bond obtained via the Public School and College Authority (PSCA). Among other system-wide upgrades, the PSCA bonds include an estimated $4.8 million for the classroom and lunchroom project at Hanceville Elementary.
A representative for McKee & Associates, the Montgomery-based architecture firm overseeing construction, said Wednesday that the project is tentatively set for completion by December of next year.
