New Booth Middle School Will Open in August

The long-awaited replacement building for E.T. Booth Middle School will open on Eagle Mountain. 

The Cherokee County School District on Thursday announced that the new facility for Booth will open in time for the 2013-14 school year.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Frank Petruzielo made the announcement during the board's meeting in Canton.

The news was a turn for the positive, as district earlier this year learned that a subcontractor on the project allegedly violated a federal law, which could have delayed the school's opening to January. 

The subcontractor in question, Thompson Grading, allegedly violated the Davis Bacon Act of 1931. 

The law states contractors or subcontractors working on federally funded projects on public buildings or public works "must pay their laborers and mechanics employed under the contract no less than the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits for corresponding work on similar projects in the area," according to the U.S. Department of Labor. 

Cherokee school leaders initially thought it would be forced to utilize the old facility and  which closed for good in May, during the first semester of the upcoming school year. 

The new building will have roughly 95 classrooms, a gym, art and music rooms, a cafeteria, separate entrances for buses and cars and computer labs. 

Booth will open with a sixth- through eighth-grade configuration, bringing it in line with the district's other middle schools. Petruzielo said the facility is projected to have 1,621 students — 523 sixth-grade, 528 seventh-grade and 570 eighth-grade students. 

"This is really gonna be an absolutely incredible education facility," he said. 

The old Booth Middle School will be demolished starting on July 1.

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