Maryville school board hires Cope Architecture for junior high field conversion, Maryville Academy redesign

The Maryville Board of Education this week hired Cope Architecture to design renovations for the junior high practice field and the Maryville Academy building.

The contracts were adopted without comment as part of the board’s consent agenda during Monday’s meeting, March 18, at Sam Houston Elementary School. For both projects the design fees for basic services will be 6% of the budget for the work.

After the meeting Maryville City Schools Director Mike Winstead told The Daily Times that at the junior high they want to turn the track and practice field into a space that can continue to serve as a football practice field and also be a lacrosse field.

A letter from Cope Architecture included with documents for the meeting describes the work at Maryville Junior High School as repurposing the existing football field into a lacrosse complex with a synthetic turf playing surface and spectator accommodations similar to the Maryville High School soccer complex. Construction could be complete by early 2025, according to the document.

Based on the dimensions, Winstead said, “It is unlikely that if we do that we’ll be able to salvage the track, and I know it’s a very popular walking track” for the public.

“We don’t use it as a track anymore,” beyond practices, he said, with meets now held on the Coulter Grove Intermediate School campus. “It needs to be redone,” he said, and the alternative to spending that money is to take out the track as part of the filed project.

The current building near John Sevier Elementary School that houses Maryville’s alternative program is being converted to accommodate early intervention preschool programs, as well as the Maryville City Schools Foundation offices.

The Maryville Academy program is moving into the former Fort Craig school on South Washington Street, which currently houses the district’s virtual school and is being renovated to add Central Office staff.

The target date for completing the changes to the Maryville Academy building is fall 2025.

In other action this week the school board approved:

• Buying 200 iPads from Apple Inc. for $55,800 to replace older devices at the elementary school level.

• Spending $32,501 for FaciliServe of Liberty, South Carolina, to service and repair bleachers at Montgomery Ridge Intermediate School. The district also is having the bleachers at the junior high serviced, but that amount is below the $25,000 level that requires school board approval. Winstead told the board the biggest expense at MRIS is to replace 32 drive rollers that are more than two decades old.