Rachel Brown
Dalton Daily Citizen
DALTON — North Murray High School will likely offer at least three programs students in the school district have never had before: cosmetology, culinary arts and graphic arts.
Principal Maria Bradley said the Murray County Board of Education still must approve the programs. Barring any problems, the programs are set to begin this fall when the county’s second high school opens with about 800 students.
“We’re just really excited about moving into our new buidling and having our own space,” she said. “Being in a temporary location has been difficult.”
North Murray opened this year in Murray County High School’s former Ninth Grade Academy, which also served as Gladden Middle School. About 500 freshmen and sophomores are currently enrolled there. About 60 students at Gladden — students who also attended Spring Place Elementary School — will have the option of staying at MCHS or attending NMHS thanks to a special zoning waiver the Board of Education granted a few months ago.
The two-story building will be 280,071 square feet and is designed to comfortably serve 1,500 students. It will have 44 academic classrooms and 17 rooms designated for vocational and agricultural classes. School system administrative services director Dean Donehoo said he expects Murray County to receive the state grant that would fund the cosmetology, culinary arts and graphic arts programs.
“Basically, those are programs that are approved as vocational programs for public school systems in the state of Georgia, and a lot of the equipment for those programs (is paid for through) the vocational grant,” Donehoo said. “We have every reason to believe we’ll get the vocational grant.”
The building sits on 130 acres on Mt. Carmel Church Road and is being built with $33.4 million from education special purpose local option sales tax funds.
The large campus size will allow students to have all their facilities in one location, rather than scattered on different tracts as in the case of Murray County High School.
“I think that is wonderful because we can have all of our athletic facilities and our agriculture facilities on one site,” Bradley said.
School board members recently approved spending $3.2 million for site work to build ball fields, tennis courts and a track. Bids for constructing athletic outbuildings haven’t gone out yet. Because of several days of rain, snow, sleet and cold temperatures, it’s possible the football field won’t be ready in time for the first game, Bradley said, and that they could have to continue sharing a field with MCHS.
Also, even though the academic wings will be complete in plenty of time before the start of school, the auditorium won’t be ready for several more months, perhaps as late as December, Bradley said. The main and auxiliary gymnasiums also might not be complete at the start of the school year.
Bradley said school leaders expect to get keys to the academic parts of the building within about a month.
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Building stats
Size: 280,071 square feet
Number of classrooms: 61
Capacity: 1,500 students
Cost: $33.4 million
