Rutherford County Schools votes on LaVergne High School annex

RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — On Tuesday, the Rutherford County School Board will vote on expanding LaVergne High School, adding nearly $44 million annex.

The annex would be roughly 100,000 square feet, raising the school’s capacity to roughly 2,600 students, according to Zone 1 School Board Member Tammy Sharp. This would be the fourth high school annex the district is working on amid record growth.

“I mean, we’re just busting at the seams here in Rutherford County,” Sharp said. “This year, we usually from May to August we usually do about 12 to 1,500 new students. This year we did 1,700.”

Sharp said the district’s several new charter schools have helped absorb some of the area’s growth, and will continue to help as they add more grades. However, new home construction show no sign of slowing down. On top of that, the construction has taken up land for potential new schools.

“We’ve probably looked at 20 pieces of property on the north for potential sites. and they were already sold to a developer or they already had something they were going to do with [it],” Sharp said. “We have an area on the west side of the interstate, it’s called Arbor Ridge, that they’ve had 10 to 11,000 permits pulled for that area…So that means 10 to 12,000 kids.”

Sharp told News 2 that ordinances are needed in Rutherford County cities to require developers to set aside land for new schools if their new builds would exceed area schools’ capacities.

Although she admitted that LaVergne High School very much needs the new annex, Sharp said the solution is only short-term.

“It’s really hard on the administration when you have 25- and 2,600 students there. I mean that’s huge. And it’s a lot for the students, too, because they (are) changing classes, the grounds and everything, it’s hard on everybody,” Sharp said. “We really do need another school, another high school, up here on this end.”

If passed, the annex proposal would move on to two different committees before making its way to the County Commission for approval. Sharp estimated the annex would take about two years to complete.

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