Overcrowding at an Orange County school could be one step closer to being remedied.
Avalon Middle School is currently at 200 percent capacity and a proposed relief school was rejected by the Orange County Commission last month. The district simply did not have enough land for a school that size. The land was zoned for a school on a 25-acre property.
Since then the school district has been talking to four homeowners whose homes border the district’s 17-acre parcel of land. Three of those owners are willing to sell their properties to the district.
Fred McKnight’s home is just a few hundred feet from where a proposed new school would go in Avalon Park.
“I understand that one school middle school is really over crowded and if I can help the kids, and you know and I’ve got a place to move to, it’s fine,” said McKnight.
McKnight and two other neighbors have stepped forward and have been talking with the district to sell their properties to them for a total of $1 million. It gives the district the extra 10 acres it needs to build the school at a cost that’s about $200,000 less than what the district thought it needed to spend.
“It also allows us to build a surface retention pond and possibly even relocate our track, all on our property, without having to use the county property and not having to building the underground extra filtration system,” said Orange County School Chairman Bill Sublette.
McKnight said he owns a home in the Panhandle and has no problem moving up there – but knows this is not a done deal, yet.
The contract is contingent on what the county decides – if the proposal is rejected again, there’s no sale.
“The Avalon Middle School is dramatically, drastically overcrowded right now. We really feel a compulsion to open a school as soon as possible,” said Sublette.
The district now hopes to draw up proposals for a new school and possibly present it to the county commission sometime this Fall.
If approved the relief school would open by the Fall of 2018.