‘It’s a great design’: New Horry County Schools building designs revealed

HORRY COUNTY, SC (WMBF) - Horry County Schools is moving forward with the design of two new elementary schools.

“We’re moving a little bit closer and making that into our reality,” said Lisa Bourcier, Director of Strategic Communications for Horry County Schools.

It’s a reality that’s been on the drawing board for some time, but school leaders said it’s a much need necessity when it comes to the growth of Horry County.

“Over the last several years, we’ve been discussing adding some additional elementary schools in our county in previous years we have purchased two parcels of property in the Carolina forest attendance area,” said Bourcier.

Bourcier stated enrollment numbers continue to climb year after year.

With 20% of Horry County students living in the Carolina Forest area, four out of five current elementary schools in the area are now well over capacity.

The next phase is the design, which has been drawn up by the architect group SMHA. The renderings will be presented to school board members.

“We want to have a prototype of an elementary school not only that possibly we use for Carolina forest area but maybe in other locations around our community as well,” said Bourcier. “It’s a great design it looks very nice we want to make sure that it functions as well a good capacity when we look at our enrollment numbers within the next 5 to 10 years.”

Although things are set in terms of what the future schools would look like, Bourcier said there are still a few other elements up for discussion.

“We will also need to actually put a price tag as well as identifying a source to pay for the construction of the school so we are a step closer to having some new elementaries in our county but we still have a lot of additional processes to go through before we make final decisions.”

She also said a construction contract will be issued once the design is complete.

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