Germantown High School breaks ground on new state-of-the-art performing arts center
Students, faculty and parents gathered at Germantown High School Monday morning, Sept. 18, to witness the groundbreaking on the school’s new performing arts center and 24 additional classrooms.
With the sounds of construction in the background, the Germantown High School Pep Band played the school’s fight song on the parking lot in front of the construction site to welcome visitors to the groundbreaking. After an introduction by Principal Cody Zumbro and a presentation of colors by the Germantown JROTC, the Germantown High School Legacy Choir sang the national anthem to open the event.
The symbolic groundbreaking comes after several months of construction through AnderCorp. Roy Anderson III, AnderCorp chairman and CEO, said his team has worked seven days a week starting this past June. The team is on track to complete the classrooms in July 2024. The new state-of-the-art, two-story performing arts center is set to finish construction in November 2024.
In his remarks, Zumbro said the new center and classrooms are the “physical embodiment” of the school board’s “shared vision for excellence” and symbolizes the commitment of Madison County Schools to education.
“These new facilities will provide our students with a cutting-edge environment in which they can communicate, collaborate and create,” Zumbro said.
During her remarks, Madison County Schools Superintendent Charlotte Seals said the project comes at a good time.
With a current student population of 1,390, the new classrooms arrive during a time of significant growth at Germantown High School, partly due to the population growth seen in Gluckstadt. The 24 new classrooms will replace the outdoor trailers currently used to accommodate overflowing classrooms.
Seals said the growth started with a spike in the mid-90s which continued and eventually led to the opening of Germantown High School in 2011. The addition of a performing arts center, which the school could not afford in its beginnings, has been in the works ever since.
Seals told The Clarion-Ledger after the ceremony that the center will open its doors to all students within the “Maverick Zone” and might eventually become available for other local arts groups not affiliated with the school.
Sam Kelly, president of the Madison County Board of Education, expressed his gratitude to the board of supervisors who helped ensure the $44 million project would not come with a tax raise for Madison County residents.
“When it comes to things like this, our board of supervisors is absolutely critical,” Kelly said. “Being able to do projects that allow us to continue to grow, they do that by partnering with us to make sure that our millage rates stay where they need to be.”
Kelly said he was inspired after visiting the Pascagoula Performing Arts Center and asked who had designed it, a question that led him to connect with Richard McNeel of JBHM Architecture, the Mississippi-based company responsible for the project’s designs.
Ryan Florreich, Principal of JBHM Architecture, said the arts center is the largest individual project for the Madison County School District.
Combined, the additions add a total of 94,000 square feet to the high school, with the center alone accounting for 55,000 square feet.
The center will include a two-story lobby for receptions and events. Moving further inside, it includes a 1,200 seat auditorium. The center also includes additional practice space for the marching band and will connect to the existing band hall which sits behind the site.
The ceremony ended with Zumbro, Seals, Florriech and members of the school board donning white construction helmets as they picked up dirt with shovels decorated with red ribbons. With smiles under their hard hats and some dust billowing up from the Mississippi dirt, the group symbolically broke ground on the project.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Germantown High Schools breaks ground on new performing arts center and classrooms
