The Gainesville City School District held a ribbon cutting Monday as they welcomed the community to the brand new Gainesville Middle School West Campus.
The new middle school, located off of McEver Road, will help relieve the newly renamed Gainesville Middle School East Campus of its large student population.
"When I came to Gainesville five years ago, one of the things people just kept talking about time and time again was, 'Wow, we've got such a big middle school,'" Gainesville City Schools Superintendent Jeremy Williams said at the ribbon cutting. "There was a lot of conversation about how do we alleviate that stress? But also, how do we give kids who are in their most precious time ... an identity?"
Williams said Gainesville Middle School West Campus was the answer to that question, alongside the growth of Gainesville High School.
Mark Southwood, senior project manager with Carroll Daniel Construction, said the new facility is about 183,000 square feet and sits on a 19-acre site. It has the capacity for about 1,200 students. He said the facility was state of the art, with a media center, gymnasium, administration offices, a band room, irrigated football field and more.
Southwood said it was good to see the community in the facility after a tricky construction process.
"It was a tough site," Smallwood said. "You can see on the back of the building there's a large retaining wall, but when you look at the height of that wall, that's how much rock was on the site."
While the site was once filled with rock, a new generation of scholars will soon call it home, according to Gainesville Middle School West Campus Principal Louis Mair.
"We're officially open for business," Mair said. "Our mission for Gainesville Middle School West is to inspire, motivate, empower, engage and educate our scholars for academic excellence. You can see the district's goal and commitment toward that with the type of facility that they built for this community."
Mair was hired in the summer of 2021 and worked in collaboration with various parts of the school district in the year leading up to the opening of the new school.
Aisha Simmons-Webb, marketing teacher and 2022-2023 teacher of the year at Gainesville Middle School West Campus, said she could not wait to see students walk into the building.
"It feels outstanding to be a part of something that's inaugural, something that is fresh, something that is groundbreaking," Simmons-Webb said. "I'm amazed that I'll be the first teacher of the year at this school, and a part of something that's going to be so magnificent and memorable throughout the years."
A photo gallery from the ribbon cutting can be viewed above.
