New Mannsdale 6th grade building plans progressing

MANNSDALE — Plans for a new sixth-grade school building to be built on the grounds of the current Mannsdale Upper Elementary School property are progressing.

The Board of Supervisors on July 6 approved rezoning the property on which the new school will be built at 371 Mannsdale Road from R-1, a residential estate district use, to SU-1, a special use district specifically for educational institutions.

Planning and Zoning Administrator Scott Weeks presented a site plan for the project to supervisors in asking for the rezoning. Supervisors unanimously approved the request.

Plans have been in the works for at least a year to build the new Mannsdale Sixth Grade School to meet the county’s growth and will be built using Madison County Schools existing funds.

Madison County Schools officials had planned to build a sixth-grade school adjacent to Germantown Middle School to accommodate the sixth-grade students in the zone.

“Due to property zoning complications and the prohibitive expense of purchasing land at an alternate site, creating a zone-wide sixth-grade school was not feasible,” wrote Charlotte A. Seals, superintendent of Madison County Schools in an Oct. 8, 2020 letter to parents. 

“Thanks to innovative thinking, a better long-term strategy was adopted: Madison Crossing students will remain at that campus for sixth grade, and Mannsdale students will attend sixth grade in a new building on the Mannsdale site. Students from these two schools will join together for seventh and eighth grades at Germantown Middle School. The implementation of this new plan will likely impact students currently in the fourth grade and younger.”

The new Mannsdale sixth-grade building will not be open until January or August 2023, Seals wrote.

“The new plan will enable Madison Crossing Elementary students to remain at that campus for sixth grade,” Seals wrote.