Building a Gold-Star School

$76.5-Million Duval Co. High School to Focus on High Tech, Special Needs

By Debra Wood

The $76.5-million, 280,000-sq-ft Duval County Public Schools’ High School AAA in Jacksonville, Fla., will serve 2,200 students, with a master plan for the possible addition of a fourth classroom wing to accommodate an additional 300 to 600 students.

SchenkelShultz Architecture designed the Duval AAA high school to double as a community disaster shelter. (Image courtesy SchenkelShultz Architecture)

W.G. Mills of Sarasota, Fla., began construction on the school in April 2008, and completion is scheduled for fall 2010.

“It’s an amazing school,” says Tony Gimenez, design project manager for capital projects for Duval County Public Schools. Gimenez says the new school, which is located on a 100-acre campus, will house three academies, possibly information technology, which will teach Web and gaming design; engineering or science; as well as a section for students with profound handicaps. The last section will feature an overhead crane system with mechanical lifts to move the students from their wheelchairs to bathroom facilities.

The current scope includes administrative spaces, classrooms, 11 laboratories, galleries, food service and dining facilities, gymnasium, auditorium, athletic fields and a stadium. The main buildings are placed around a central courtyard.

“It’s a high-tech-focused school,” says Jason Burt, project manager for W.G. Mills. “The school is flexible, and as teaching criteria change, the school should be able to adapt.”

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This school has “a small-scale learning community philosophy organized into three schools within a school,” says Daniel M. Tarczynski, a partner with SchenkelShultz Architecture of St. Augustine, Fla. “An extended learning/project-based academic classroom layout is incorporated.”

SchenkelShultz designed the school with an enhanced hurricane protection area, as required by state law. County emergency management officials will be able to use it during emergencies as a shelter with 850 standard beds and 250 special-needs beds.

“It had to be hardened,” Burt says. “And it had special electrical requirements due to the special needs (students). It had to have additional receptacles on emergency power.”

The walls are thicker and employ more reinforcing steel. Doors and windows meet higher wind-speed thresholds than the rest of the structure.

The buildings employ site-cast tilt-up concrete and a structural-steel shell.

W.G. Mills is building two large retention ponds, which will serve as an onsite wetland area. Its contract also calls for an 800-car parking lot; adding to an earthen berm to separate the school from a neighboring senior residential community; and widening and extending a city roadway.