Starting in November, Broadmoor Middle School in Baton Rouge is set to begin its transformation into an arts-based middle-high school, a project that begins with the removal of asbestos from the 61-year-old structure.
Also advancing are plans to tear down and rebuild Brownfields Elementary as well as to build a new elementary school on 47 acres the school system is trying to purchase along Perkins Road, just east of Siegen Lane, between Perkins and Ward Creek.
Work on Broadmoor Middle and the rebuilding of Brownfields Elementary are scheduled to be complete by summer 2024, in time for the start of the 2024-25 school year.
The completion date for the new elementary school in southeast Baton Rouge depends on how quickly school officials can finalize the purchase of the 47 acres. BREC, which has two adjacent parks in the area, is working with the school district to create an original “School in the Park†on that property that would integrate the school inside a park. The school would house up to 1,500 students in prekindergarten to eighth grade.
The new arts conservatory at Broadmoor Middle — dubbed “the Juilliard of Baton Rouge†— would serve as a place where teenagers can cultivate their skills for possible careers in music, film, dance, theater and visual arts. The School Board approved the creation of the new arts conservatory, serving grades 6-12, last November.
All three projects are funded via the Tax Plan, a series of school construction projects that East Baton Rouge Parish voters approved in April 2018. The projects are being paid for via a 1-cent sales tax earmarked for education that was renewed in that election. The current budget calls for $15 million for Broadmoor Middle, $25.1 million for Brownfields Elementary and $25 million for the new elementary in southeast Baton Rouge.
All three projects are employing a process new to the East Baton Rouge Parish school system called CMAR, short for Construction Management At Risk.
Rather than submitting traditional bids, interested construction companies will submit “statements of qualifications†laying out why they should manage the work. And rather than working from a finished design, the company selected will participate in the latter half of the design process with the architects well before the start of construction.
Broadmoor Middle later this month will be seeking qualifications from interested companies, while the new southeast Baton Rouge elementary school is waiting on the land purchase before proceeding with its CMAR process.
On Thursday, the parish School Board as well as .
A final vote on the CMAR process and hiring an architect for Brownfields is set for Sept. 15. Brownfields Elementary students and staff have temporarily vacated the 11615 Ellen Drive campus. The school’s 230 students are sharing space with White Hills Elementary, located at 5300 Bentley Drive and home to about 100 students.
Once selected, the companies chosen as part of the CMAR process will work with the architects for the latter stages of design as well as the development of construction documents. The construction company will also prepare a “guaranteed maximum price†that the school system can adopt or reject.
The first step for Broadmoor Middle is to remove the asbestos from the 86,455 square-foot facility starting in November and ending in February. The board with a final vote also scheduled for Sept. 15.
The arts conservatory school has garnered heavy backing from arts groups in Baton Rouge as well as several arts educators in the parish.
The plans set last year for the new arts school were for it to serve grades six to 12 with about 455 to 490 students. Besides the day school, the renovated Broadmoor Middle would be home to summer camps and after-school arts classes accessible to students across the district.
It’s not clear when the new conservatory school will open. The original proposal was to open the school for middle school grades in fall 2023 — high school students would start coming a year later — but that schedule was set when school officials thought they could complete renovations to Broadmoor Middle by summer 2023. The timetable has since been pushed back a year to summer 2024.
