Delaware
The Colonial School District retained Tetra Tech in December of 1999 to design a new school to house 1200 students and requested that it be bid in 5 months. Architects and Engineers at Tetra Tech provided this rapid delivery and less than two years later in 2001 the school was in session.
The new 157,000 square foot Southern Elementary School houses students from kindergarten thru fifth grade on a rolling 70 acre site within a sprawling community outside of Delaware City, Delaware. The structure is essentially a "school within a school" designed to operate as two separate 600 student schools sharing common spaces such as the media center, computer labs, kitchen, mechanical space, multi-purpose room, and central administration core. The "corridor-concept" plan utilizes an "X" plan with 4 wings surrounding a central support core and two sub-administration offices. This arrangement resulted in considerable cost savings by sharing support spaces that would have been replicated in building two separate schools, as well as reduced site development costs. The result is a facility that embraces the latest technological advancements and maintains a high level of flexibility for future growth and adaptation.
Capitalizing on the success of Southern Elementary School, the Colonial School District decided to "clone" Southern Elementary, building Kathleen H. Wilbur Elementary School in Red Lion which was completed in 2007 as an exact replica.
