Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Groundbreakings Kick off School Projects for Belton ISD

  • 02/05/18

This week teachers, students and administrators held a groundbreaking to celebrate the start of construction for the new Charter Oak Elementary School. When completed for the 2019 start of classes, the new 82,300 square-foot Charter Oak Elementary School will have capacity for 800 students.

The new school will be a flexible and adaptable 21st century learning environment, based on the building program developed through the collaboration between Belton ISD in Texas, and O’Connell Robertson. In addition to general and special education classrooms, students will enjoy specialty flex classrooms that offer art, music and computer stations.

Belton ISD

Charter Oak was selected as the name to commemorate a historic event in Belton history, where, under a live oak tree, Bell County held its first election in 1850. The live oak tree still exists today, not far from the new school location, near Poison Oak Road in Temple, Texas.

Belton ISD has been identified as a fast growth school district; the projects are part of their Roadmap to BISD 2025, a 10-year facilities master plan to provide capacity for growth through 2025. "Belton ISD has grown by over 3,500 students in the last decade’,” said Dr. Susan Kincannon, Belton ISD Superintendent. “In the last 20 years, our student enrollment has doubled. By 2025, we will have nearly 15,000 students in our schools.  Planning is essential to our ability to keep pace with the fast growth of our district. O’Connell Robertson’s team has worked side by side with the District to study and develop plans to address our facility needs.”

Earlier this month, Belton ISD held another groundbreaking to mark expansions to Lakewood Elementary School, which will include music classrooms and a new gymnasium. The projects at Lakewood ES are expected to be complete by July 2018. O’Connell Robertson provided architecture, MEP engineering and interior design services for both projects.

Featured

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.

  • NWEA Report Recommends K–12 Natural Disaster Recovery Strategies

    The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a K–12 assessment and research organization, recently announced the release of a new playbook for schools and communities recovering from extreme weather events, according to a news release.

  • Image courtesy of Kahler Slater

    UW–Madison Announces Completion of Morgridge Hall

    The University of Wisconsin–Madison recently announced that construction is complete on Morgridge Hall, a new academic building, according to a news release. The facility opened September 3 at the start of the fall semester, consolidating the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences into a single facility for the first time.

  • Spaces4Learning Trends & Predictions for Educational Facilities in 2026: Part I

    We asked, you answered, and the results are in! Last year, we put out a call for submissions to collect our readership’s opinion on trends and predictions for K–12 and higher education facilities in 2026.