DeKalb officials recommend keeping Druid Hills High School where it is

DeKalb County School District officials are recommending that Druid Hills High School stay at its current campus, according to a presentation discussed Friday by school board members.

The district has long planned to modernize the aging school, but in recent months was exploring whether it made more sense to build a brand new Druid Hills High at a different location. The current property at Haygood Drive is small, lacking space for full-sized athletic amenities and increased student capacity, and has infrastructure problems that make building there difficult.

But a new school at a different location “quite frankly, would no longer be Druid Hills High School,” said acting Superintendent Norman Sauce III at a school board meeting on Friday.

The tentative plan would modernize the historic main building at the campus, but would demolish the remaining structures. The plan is to replace them with a brand new four-story academic building and a two-story parking garage with an athletic field on top. The new school would be able to accommodate 1,600 students. The school’s current enrollment is about 1,450 students, according to state data.

District officials have been working on a plan to modernize the school after students released a video more than three years ago showing water-damaged ceilings and walls, electrical hazards and plumbing issues.

The tentative plan for Druid Hills High would be to demolish all of the existing buildings except for the main historic building, and replace them with a new four-story academic building. (Image courtesy DeKalb County School District)

The project will be expensive, Chief Operating Officer Erick Hofstetter warned. The construction itself is expected to cost $141 million, and the total cost including planning and permitting is expected to be around $175 million, he said.

In 2022, the school board set aside $50 million for the project, which turned out to not be enough thanks to the difficulties of the location. Now, Hofstetter said the money would come from the next round of funding from the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, which will be on the ballot for voters to approve in November 2026. Approval isn’t guaranteed, but more than 80% of DeKalb County voters supported the E-SPLOST in 2021, the most recent vote. District leaders are also considering asking voters to approve a bond, or a loan, that would allow them to use the sales tax dollars immediately rather than waiting for them to accumulate over the five-year life span of the tax.

The project would take about 36 months — if the more than 400 ninth graders at the school move to DeKalb School of the Arts in Avondale Estates during construction. If the ninth graders don’t move, the timeline would increase to 48 months, Hofstetter said.

Most board members were pleased with the plans.

“This modernization proposal is much superior to the iteration that we saw a year ago,” said board member Whitney McGinniss.

Other board members were concerned about how this project will fit into the district’s future, as it goes through the redistricting process to consider changing how it uses some schools and facilities to better accommodate the needs of students in each community. Additionally, the board heard from community members at its meeting on Monday who wanted them to move the school to another location — which would allow them to construct a larger school with amenities more on par with contemporary campuses.