By this time next year, students and faculty at Georgia Military College prep should have a brand new home.
Construction is continuing at a brisk pace around GMC’s new prep school facility, which checks in at three stories and 75,000-plus square feet. School officials hope to begin moving into the building by May, which would provide ample time before the first day of school in August. GMC officials offered a walking tour of the new facility to local media outlets on Tuesday morning. Gen. Peter Boylan, seated in his familiar golf cart, spoke first.
“This building will be as modern as we can possibly make it. I don’t want to say that no expenses were spared, but the size of the classrooms and the technology in the classrooms are the very impressive,” Boylan said. “We are very proud.”
GMC currently has 500 students – 235 middle schoolers and 265 high schoolers, according to Col. John Thornton, prep school principal. Despite the new digs, school officials have no plans of increasing enrollment in the near future. Tuition also will remain the same, added Thornton. The current cost of tuition at GMC prep is $4,050 per year, with roughly 20 percent of students receiving various amounts of financial aid.
“Enrollment will stay at 500, with no plans to increase enrollments per the guidance of Gen. Boylan and the Board of Trustees. We are determined to maintain a smaller atmosphere where every teacher knows their students and every student knows each other,” said Thornton, adding that class sized will continue to average 15-16 students. “We are proud of the family atmosphere that we maintain here at GMC.”
Thornton is especially excited about moving nearly everything under one roof. Currently, GMC prep students split classes between Jenkins Hall (Little GMC), Miller Hall (New Academic Building) and Cordell Events Center. Beginning next year, nearly every prep school class will be taught inside the new facility.
GMC teachers, meanwhile, are most excited about the size of the new classrooms, as well as their new Promethean interactive whiteboards. Each of the 36 new classrooms will feature Promethean boards, which are internet- based, multi-media learning tools. A Promethean board basically acts as a “chalkboard of the future” and allows teachers to concoct creative, computer- based lesson plans. Each Promethean board costs roughly $4,000 and the cost of installing each board is an additional $3,000 or $4,000, according to school officials. GMC teachers will have plenty of room to roam while using the new whiteboards. The average size of the new classrooms is roughly 900 square feet, which is more than double the size of many current classrooms at Jenkins Hall.
GMC students, meanwhile, are perhaps most excited about their new lockers. Locker space has always been an issue around GMC. Many sixth graders, for example, currently carry around two or three different bookbags and other sacks. The new facility, meanwhile, will allow for every one of GMC’s 500 students to have their own six-foot locker. Also of note is the new nurse’s station, which features a clinic, three treatment rooms, three isolation rooms and a full shower. Thornton also is proud of the new science labs and music suite, which are much more spacious than current facilities.
The dropoff point for parents will be located on Greene Street and across the road from Dr. David Ritchie’s optometry office. Students will enter the new facility though one of several arches and walk into a large courtyard, which will be highlighted by “a big ol’ pretty fountain,” according to GMC Board of Trustees member Randy New. The courtyard will be visible from several large windows placed strategically inside the building. On the far end of the building, meanwhile, is a large atrium/entrance way that will feature a 35- glass wall. The view on the other end will include the parade grounds and the Old Capitol Building.
The building also will be well-fortified, to say the least. A layer of insulation will be topped off with two layers of bricks and a half-inch of stucco, which will mirror the facade of the Old Capitol Building.
The project is expected to cost roughly $23 million. The General Assembly and Gov. Perdue previously approved $21.355 million for the project.
For the complete story, see the Oct. 29 issue of The Baldwin Bulletin
