Fort Worth Country Day breaks ground on new $25 million facility for elementary students
Elementary students at Fort Worth Country Day, a private school located in the southwest region of the city, will transfer to a new learning environment worth $25 million next year.
School officials announced this week the groundbreaking of Country Day’s new Annie Richardson Bass Lower School, which will be outfitted with indoor and outdoor learning spaces, a library with a fireplace, flat-screen TVs in all classrooms and more for first- through fourth-graders, according to a news release. The 32,720-square-foot facility — expected to be complete in spring 2025 — will accommodate 350 students and replace the original lower school that was built 60 years ago.
The former building has been bulldozed, and students in those grades are learning in a temporary space in the meantime, officials said on Friday. The number of first- through fourth-grade students will remain the same once the new building is complete.
The release states that the new school building “will be infused with natural light, connections to the outdoors, tuned acoustics, and appropriate technology to expand the school’s delivery of future-focused experiences and activities.” Funding comes from Country Day’s “Forward Together” campaign that raised $31 million from 100 school families and 70 faculty and staff members, which also goes toward athletic field improvements and endowment.
“Our new Lower School is designed to create exceptional learning environments within classrooms and communal spaces while delivering dramatic improvements for safety and efficiency,” Eric Lombardi, Country Day’s head of school, said in a statement. “It will have a strong connection to our campus’s amazing outdoors, while also giving our faculty and students first-class spaces to inspire the highest level of elementary-appropriate learning.”
The building will be separated into two wings with the north side dedicated to first- and second-graders and the south side dedicated to third- and fourth-graders, according to the release. Each wing will have a covered outdoor learning space “designed to encourage exploration, collaboration and adventure beyond the traditional classroom” and “that supports active learning and creative thinking” for the respective age groups.
Beyond the fireplace, the 2,130-square-foot library will have floor-to-ceiling windows, adaptive furniture and sliding glass doors that open to a courtyard centered around a chinkapin oak tree.
Other features include:
Two science labs, a makerspace and study rooms
Commons area for special programming, class performances and lectures
A playground with a sports court and play structures
Proximity-controlled exterior doors and one access-controlled entrance
A safety shelter with windows and walls built to withstand 250 mph winds during a storm or tornado
Sustainable design components and water-conservation technologies
Whitney Creel, a Country Day parent of three boys currently in prekindergarten, second grade and fourth grade, said the three features that stick out to her are the single entrance and exit, safety shelter against natural disasters and the fireplace in the library. As a Country Day alumna and a donor of the project, she cherishes the memory of listening to librarians read books near the fireplace during winter time in the previous building and is glad to see it being replicated with the new construction.
“That makes me very excited because it’s new, but we are also holding on to our heritage and kind of keeping the staples of things that stay in your memory forever, and so I think that’s really neat,” she said.
Creel noted how formative those elementary school years are and is eager to see how the students will benefit from the new space.
“Kids are really kind of coming into their own in those ages,” Creel said. “I’m so excited for all of the children to get to go to school in this amazing new building. I just can’t wait to see what kind of things transpire out of it from an educational perspective.”
Country Day brands itself as a college-preparatory school that focuses on the 3A’s: academics, arts and athletics. Located on a 104-acre campus between Bryant Irvin Road and Chisholm Trail Parkway, 1,097 students are enrolled in prekindergarten through 12th grade for the current school year, according to its website.
This story was originally published January 19, 2024 at 2:46 PM.
