School district preps for $32M elementary in Key West

The Monroe County School District’s building boom stretches from Tavernier to Key West, with a stop in Marathon.

With nearly $105 million expected from its share of sales tax revenue, the district this week released details of plans for a new $32 million Gerald Adams Elementary School, 5855 College Road on Stock Island.

“The school is overcrowded,” said Andy Griffiths, chairman of the School Board. “They have more indoor play space but also multi-use indoor space for activities.”

Griffiths added the $105 million figure is what the district expects to have in the bank. “That doesn’t mean we’ll spend that,” he said Tuesday.

Most of a construction report made available in advance of Tuesday’s School Board meeting is made up of the architect Harvard Jolly of St. Petersburg’s stock photographs of students and classroom spaces titled “21st Century Learning” and design images showing the new Gerald Adams will be built adjacent to the existing school.

But the little text includes numbers that resonate with Key West parents and teachers.

The new elementary, built to hold 635 students, will measure 91,000 gross square feet, a calculation that includes the sum of all areas of a building within its exterior walls, including space for circulation, according to the report.

Also Tuesday, the board was set to review staff’s recommendation to award a $261,511 contract to Ajax Building Corporation for construction management services.

Gerald Adams’ enrollment of 554 students is 50 percent Hispanic and nearly 29 percent black, the most diverse public school campus in the Florida Keys.

The district is also in the midst of building a new Plantation Key School in Tavernier, which at last count was costing $32 million, and a new section of Stanley Switlik Elementary in Marathon.

“With completion of these three projects, we will be finishing replacing every single school in Monroe County,” Griffiths said of a plan that began in 1995 that has totaled more than a third of a billion dollars over the past decades.

Gwen Filosa: @KeyWestGwen

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 10:00 AM with the headline "School district preps for $32M elementary in Key West."