Lake County Schools Prepare for $65M in New Facilities

The five-year capital improvement plan for Lake County Schools, located in Tavares, Fla., includes $65 million in new and expanded schools, as well as $106.7 million in school renovation and modernization work. The plan covers planned projects between 2021 and 2025.

Future projects include a K–8 Minneola Area Relief school, set to cost $35 million and have a capacity of 1,200; an expansion to Villages Elementary School costing $6 million; an expansion to Windy Hill Middle School costing $12 million; and an unnamed, $11.89-million capacity project for South Lake High School.

Construction projects scheduled for completion this year include the new Lake Pointe Academy, a K–8 school covering 175,000 square feet and costing $33.8 million, set to open this fall; and expansions to Lake Minneola High School of 18 new classrooms and capacity for an additional 480 students.

Further information on the progress of these projects is available here.

The American Institute of Architects project that education construction spending (for K–12 and higher ed both) is set to drop 3.9% in 2021 but increase by 2.7% in 2022.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • How a Portable Sink Helped an Art Classroom Run More Smoothly

    Classroom design decisions can have outsized effects on instructional time and safety at schools juggling mismatched infrastructure, strict budgets, and crowded schedules — particularly in the arts. Between spilled paint and dirty brushes, art classes run smoother with a sink in the studio. But many schools don’t have a sink in every art classroom.

  • 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.

  • Chartwells Launches Campus Dining Evaluation Framework

    Contract food-service management provider Chartwells Higher Education recently announced the launch of BLUEPRINT, according to a news release. The evaluation framework was designed to provide a data-driven and customizable roadmap towards optimizing campus dining services and, by extension, the student experience.

  • Illinois State University Breaks Ground on College of Fine Arts Transformation

    Illinois State University in Normal, Ill., recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts transformation project, according to university news. The series of new constructions and renovations will upgrade spaces in Centennial East, the Center for the Visual Arts, and the Center for the Performing Arts, as well as replace the existing Centennial West facility with a new Commons Building.