Changes Coming to Sunrise Valley ES

The community is invited to attend the school's PTA meeting Tuesday night at 7 p.m., where it can get a look at the school's planned renovations.

The renovations, approved last year as part of the are slated to begin in April of 2013 and be completed in by December of 2014, SVES principal Elizabeth English said.

Among the highlights of the renovations:

* An addition featuring 15 classrooms. This wing will contain the primary grades, English said.

* The "annex," the school's temporary classroom structure (that has been in place for years) will be torn down.

* The school's pod structure will remain, but each pod will go from seven classrooms to five, and each classroom will have a door and windows. The school, built with an open floorplan in the late 1970s, currently has only one classroom with an actual door.

* The special ed classrooms will be expanded.

* The library will move from the midddle of the school to an addition near the school gym.

* An expanded fine arts section near the middle of the school, featuring additional music performance, classroom and instrument storage space; two art rooms, an art prep room and a dedicated kiln room.

* Changes to the Kiss-and-Ride route. The current Kiss-And-Ride route has vehicles going up Cross School Road and making a U-turn in order to take a right turn into the school parking lot area. The route may be changed so Kiss-and-Ride is on the opposite side of the school, closer to where the new classroom wing will be located.

"Anything we can do to get the traffic off of Cross School will be a big improvement," English said.

The school currently has 650 students in grades K-6. With the renovations, there will be space for more than 800 students, English said.