New K-5 school on track for fall 2027
“I got to tour the school on Monday (Feb. 9], with Merit Construction, whose doing the work, and it’s fantastic,” said Morgan, whose district covers Farragut. “It’s unbelievable to me that last May we were standing there, breaking ground, and now it is up and looking great.
“They’ve even got drywall … systems in place there,” she said.”It’s going to be the largest elementary school Knox County has ever built, and its slated to hold up to 1,400 students, so we will take a lot of pressure off of our primary and intermediate schools by having three K-5 schools.
“It will be a huge transformation point for our community when we do that switch in fall 2027,” Morgan said.
She recalled the land was purchased before she came on the school board.
“I got to come on board before the groundbreaking,” Morgan said. “The Town of Farragut, I know, worked very hard with Susan Horn (Morgan’s predecessor on the school board] and Knox County Schools, making sure we did a good set-up for our elementary school.
About her district, “I think that our Farragut schools are amazing,” she said. “I don’t think they’re perfect. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be doing this role."
Still, Morgan said Farragut schools are overcrowded. While Farragut High School is not at the overcrowded stage yet, she anticipates the high school will experience overcrowding before too long as well.
In Farragut, “we are one of the only primary and intermediate schools set up in Knox County,” she observed, noting Chilhowee also has primary and intermediate. “Our primary school has over 1,000 kids in it, and that just kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders.
“And a staggering number of kindergartners came in not potty-trained,” Morgan added. “They had a rough year.”
Likewise at the intermediate and middle schools, she said there are about 3,000 in those two schools combined.
“So, I’m sure it is not new to anybody that we are building a new school,” she added.
So, “at Knox County Schools, we are working hard to make sure that kids know not only their foundational skills — how to read, how to do math — but they are also leaving with what they need to either go on to a post secondary institution, to enlist in the military or to earn a high-paying wage,” Morgan said. “We are graduating kids now who could go out into the world and start earning a good income as electricians or plumbers or some other CTE career.”
Recently, she said, Knox County Schools was named and Advancing District.
“Before (school superintendent] Dr. [Jon]Ryswick came on, I believe it was four years ago, we were a Needs Improvement District,” Morgan recalled. “We were struggling. If you had a child in school here, you probably saw that was the case.
“We still have a long ways to go, but this designation from the state shows that we’re
on the right track,” she
added. “Our numbers have increased dramatically [in regard to reading and math proficiency].”
Morgan noted, though, that Knox County’s enrollment has dropped. Part of that was a result of rezoning in the Powell community.
Also, “We had a bump with the COVID times and we haven’t quite come back up from that yet,” she said. “We’re at 58-59,000 students.
Previously, Morgan said it was 67,000 students for many years. However, Knox County’s is the third largest system in the state with more than 9,000 employees.
Despite the enrollment drop, “enrollment is up in Farragut,” she said. “We are actually down in previous years,
especially at the lower level, but you know how things are with people moving in and things continue to be built. We anticipate our numbers to keep going up.”
