TONOPAH — A ground-breaking ceremony is set for the construction of the new $25 million Tonopah Elementary School beginning at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 29.
The new facility will be built near the town high school on Ray Tennant Drive and is expected to create a centralized academic campus, serving pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade students.
“I think it’s more than a school building — it’s a commitment [to the Tonopah community],” Joe Schmidt, director of maintenance/operations, safety/security for the Nye County School District said in March, as trustees agreed to broker a deal with Texas-based CORE Construction to start the project.
Preliminary renderings of the new school call for a playground in the back of the facility, two parking lots and a bus drop-off lane. It’s also expected to include a library, along with nine classrooms for pre-K through fifth-grade students, and separate classrooms for art, music and special education instruction.
An updated timeline for the project hasn’t been announced.
Elements of the new school will be built mostly offsite by manufacturers in a controlled-setting warehouse and then trucked to Tonopah to be assembled there, officials say, saving the district millions in labor costs, materials and time on a project that might otherwise be delayed by weather.