Sparta’s Findlay Elementary Submitted for Design Award

The design of Sparta’s new Findlay Elementary School is being submitted for a Tennessee School Board Association award.

White County Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said it might be styled as learning factory with its saw tooth roof and cinder block walls, since it is near Sparta’s industrial park. However, the inside feels like a modern school.

“There’s lots of small meeting spaces, what we do is response to interventions, small group interventions,” Dronebarger said. “There’s lots of spaces where you can pull a group of four or five, six students into a little spot and have an office where you can do some interventions there.”

Dronebarger said there are also collaborative work spaces and an indoor recess area for kindergarten and pre-k. There is also state of the art security.

“There’s safety measure built in,” Dronebarger said. “Some are pretty obvious and some are confidential.”

Behind the scenes, there are upgrades to be less intrusive to student’s learning experiences. That way repairs and maintenance don’t interfere.

“The Mechanical Mezzanine we put in I think is pretty unique, there’s an attic space above the entire hallways in the school,” Dronebarger said. “Where all of our HVAC, plumbing and all those things are up there so our maintenance guys can get to those and not interrupt learning.”

The White County School Board approved submiting Findlay Elementary for this top design in new structure award. The TSBA will announce in the Spring if Findlay Elementary makes the list on nominees. The new Findlay Elementary School opened up to students in January of 2020.