The Renaissance Academy, the working name for a standalone institution geared to science, technology, engineering and math pursuits for Monongalia County’s high school students, is quickly advancing from the idea stage – to the earth-moving one.
Four architectural firms that have done business in West Virginia and worldwide, plus their corporate partners, are now in the final running for the $72 million project, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
They are: DLR Group/Williamson Shriver, Alpha/Mills Group/Perkins & Will, Grimm + Parker/McKinley and ZMM/Cannon Design.
A contract could be award by the end of April for the educational complex, tentatively slated to site on an elevated 150-acre expanse of land in the Cassville area, which would be in full view from nearby Interstate 79.
The district purchased the land for $1.5 million three years ago, the superintendent said.
All four firms made pitches during last week’s Board of Education meeting.
While the district does own other property that could work, the Cassville site keeps lining up as the top choice, at least for now.
Situated along W.Va. 7, it was chosen because of its equal proximity to Morgantown High School, University High and Clay-Battelle.
Call that trio the existing feeder schools – technically speaking, in the literal sense – for a new, specialized school geared to STEM and STEM only, Campbell said.
It’s about land, and changing landscapes, he said, in the efforts of the Mountain State and its public school districts tasked with getting young people ready for the careers of the 21st century.
“We’re excited to be getting to this point,” said Campbell, who spearheaded the proposal and project and first started talking about it before the pandemic in 2020.
“In terms of brick-and-mortar construction, this will be nothing like our school district has ever seen,” he said.
What Campbell does see are images of students from the three high schools rotating in and out of the academy for specialized technical training, without sacrificing the liberal arts offerings in their main buildings.
That means no crowding out of the all-important core classes, he said.
The coming of the new STEM school will also herald the retrofitting of the current Monongalia County Technical Education Center on Mississippi Street.
MTEC, in turn, would offer age-appropriate tech instruction to Mon’s middle-schoolers, casting the career-technical education net even wider.
For now, the Renaissance Academy is the centerpiece of the district’s 2020-30 Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan, or CEFP, as it is known in the central office.
The CEFP is a paradigm-shifting dice roll that’s updated every 10 years.
Marquee projects rule in the document, which is a kind of visionary operator’s manual.
The construction of Eastwood Elementary, the county’s first official environmentally friendly green building on the Mileground, came in under the 2010-20 document.
A new University High on Bakers Ridge was the unifying project in the document before that.
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