A site for the Cache County School District’s new elementary school has been presented to the Board of Education for final approval. The district recommended a Hyde Park location over another possible location in Smithfield.
Cache County School District Superintendent Todd McKee presented the final proposal to the district’s Board of Education at the June 6 board meeting. The recommended site is an already owned section of land near 300 North and 400 East in Hyde Park.
“We went through a process to look at the financial costs, the number of kids served, and the number of buses that would be running between the Hyde Park site that we’ve had and the Smithfield site,” McKee said.
According to McKee, the new school would have a capacity of about 350 students, which would make it the smallest elementary school in the district. However, the location would help to spread out the students that the district serves, decreasing capacity concerns for all elementary schools.
One aspect of concern for the location is that it is within a designated flood plain.
“We’re assured that we can mitigate that area and it shouldn’t disrupt or impact the ability of the school to provide services for kids,” McKee said. “That site, though, would require us to build a two-story building.”
CCSD Board of Education President Teri Rhodes asked if a new request for proposals will need to be sent out to build the school since it is to be two-stories.
“If that’s going to be a two-story elementary, then we won’t be able to use the same elementary plans that we’ve used for the last five or six that we’ve built,” Rhodes said.
McKee confirmed that the district will need to put out a request for proposals, but that would have needed to happen for either site. He said that the district is already in the process of putting that out.
According to McKee, the main reason that the Hyde Park location was ultimately chosen over the Smithfield location was due to buses.
“What really seemed to push the needle between Hyde Park and Smithfield locations is that this school will serve only Hyde Park kids,” McKee said.
“With this location in Hyde Park, we’d need two buses to ensure that every student was able to arrive. If we were to move it to Smithfield, we would have to run five buses.”
The new elementary school is scheduled to be finished and operational for the 2027-2028 school year, and construction of the project will likely begin next year.
The CCSD Board of Education will vote on whether to accept the recommended site or not at the next board meeting on Thursday, June 20.
