The Bluffs at Young’s Creek, pictured here, is the largest planned residential development in the Franklin school district. Developments like these are causing Franklin schools officials to consider possible building expansion projects to accommodate more students..
Franklin Community Schools officials are preparing for a future school expansion.
The school board will pick an architecture firm at its June 13 meeting to help the district prepare for a possible school expansion in the next decade. The board will consider proposals from three firms: CSO Architects, Lancer + Beebe and Schmidt Associates, all of Indianapolis.
In the coming years about 1,750 single-family homes and more than 525 multi-family apartment units are set to be built within Franklin’s school district boundaries. The district includes students from the city of Franklin, town of Bargersville residents who live in Union Township, and Johnson County residents who live outside of city and town limits.
Franklin’s developments are expected to be completed within the next seven years if developments continue at the current pace, Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett said in April.
Bargersville town officials did not have estimates on when the town’s developments would be completed.
With those developments, Franklin schools projects the district will grow from the current 4,886 population to about 5,650 a decade from now, according to school district documents.
The three architecture firms were challenged to create renderings for an expansion of Union Elementary School. The three firms did their best at preserving the original façade and gymnasium of the school, while adding academic wings to increase the school’s capacity from its 2022-23 projected enrollment of 158 students to about 600 students.
Any project isn’t going to have a single right answer right off the bat, said Misha Bilyayev, project manager at Lancer + Beebe.
“We looked at what elements needed to be preserved,” he said of the potential Union Elementary project. “The west side of the building is verging on an Art Deco type of façade and the gymnasium is special to this building.”
The Union Elementary project is hypothetical and no decisions have been made, said David Clendening, superintendent of Franklin schools.
“At Union, one subdivision is planned for 600 homes and if you look at 0.4 students for every home, that’s 240 kids for Union Township in a building that can only hold 200 kids. Other spaces in elementary schools will need to be updated or renovated,” Clendening said. “We’re not saying Union will get a new elementary school in the next two years, we just want to have an architecture firm we trust in the next seven, eight, nine, ten years we can expand with.”
The school district has been looking at how to prepare for population growth for the past two years, which has included school officials redrawing elementary school boundaries to make room at some of the schools expected to experience the most growth, such as Creekside Elementary School. While Franklin Community Middle School, Custer Baker Intermediate School and Franklin Community High School have room for a population boom, elementary schools in the district do not, Clendening said.
Any expansion projects will likely not start until at least 2027, when debt from construction of Franklin High School comes off the books.
As Franklin schools moves forward, school leaders want feedback from the community, Clendening said.
“The next step is a recommendation to the board next month about who would be a good partner in this journey. We’re continuing this conversation for the entire month,” Clendening said. “We’re encouraging the community, if you have questions, get them to us.”
