As Collierville High School begins to go up, so does enthusiasm
The future home of more than 3,000 Collierville High School students is surrounded by a sea of mud. On a recent afternoon, a green all-terrain forklift moved back and forth near one of the school’s partially built walls, its tires sinking into the muck. Inside the main building, some of the unlit hallways were partly flooded. Swank, it was not. At least not yet. Though many sections of the buildings still have no roofs —and some sections aren’t even a reality — the concrete block walls are rising, bit by bit. The school, one of the most expensive public projects in Collierville’s history, is taking shape.
“I know right now it’s hard to get your mind around what this might look like,” school system Chief of Operations Mike Simpson said during a recent tour of the site. “But come back in the spring, and it’ll be quite different.”
Town leaders voted in 2015 to approve a 25-cent property tax increase and issue more than $90 million in bonds for construction of the high school and related costs.
When complete, the campus near the intersection of Shelby Drive and Syca-
more Road in southern Collierville will be the site of one of the biggest high schools in the region, able to accommodate up to 3,500 kids, depending on its configuraton.
“It’s a different animal,” Simpson said. “The scope, the size. Nothing I’ve got to compare it with.”
The high school serves as a tangible illustration of local leaders’ development strategy: provide a strong school system that will draw new residents and businesses to the fast-growing suburb.
If all goes according to plan, the school will open in August 2018. So far, progress has been good, Simpson said.
“We had excellent weather between May and, I would say, late November, which really gave us a chance to get a good start,” he said.
The cafeteria and auditorium will be built to accommodate 1,000 people each. One section will serve as a spot for teaching hands-on subjects including welding.
Simpson pointed out one room and explained its purpose: kids could come to this room for laptop computer updates and repairs. The room would also have space to store the laptops in the summer.
He said the school system has never included something like this in a school before. But then, the district never before assigned every student a laptop.
The school means a lot to the town, said Jeff Jones, a former high school principal and chief of staff for Collierville Schools. “It’s very much the culmination of a long path,” he said. “No. 1, achieving our own municipal school district was a longtime dream of so many in Collierville.”
Collierville and five other suburban school districts split from Shelby County schools system and began educating students independently in 2014. Meanwhile, the population of the town and school enrollment continues to grow. And then there’s the modernity of the building, including a “Stemnasium,” an area for working with robots and related projects.
“I think the architects voiced it best when they said this is the high school you wish you had gone to,” Jones said.