ARS Board of Directors Calls Town Hall

The American Renaissance School Board of Directors recently closed on a 13 million dollar bond funding a project that will provide a permanent K-8 downtown Statesville campus for ARS. This project will solidify our presence in the downtown community with a unique arts-based educational experience across a 5-building campus. This project includes the acquisition of 2 existing downtown buildings, renovation of the existing elementary and middle school buildings, and the construction of a new gymnasium and activities center.

Newly Acquired Downtown Properties

We will be updating our two newly acquired downtown buildings with a 1.5 million dollar renovation project to create a state of the art educational experience in both traditional and encore classes. The newly acquired Statesville Record and Landmark building will house all of the school’s encore classes and also feature a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) center that will include a robotics program and other STEM activities.

The second building we purchased is located on Cooper Street, and sits directly adjacent to our current middle school. This building will become the home of a unique learning opportunity for our students as we open Statesville’s only intermediate school, which will eventually house our 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classrooms. This will create a unique educational model to help our 6th grade students gradually transition into middle school, while building leadership skills in a more structured and supervised environment.

New Gymnasium and Activities Center

We are extremely excited to formally announce the construction of the $5.4 million ARS gymnasium and activities center that will give our students the opportunity to have an indoor space for physical education.

This space will house a full-size basketball court, 3 multi-purpose conference rooms and a stage that can be utilized for a variety of assembly, community events and performance opportunities with a seating capacity up to 380.

With the addition of the Intermediate school, we will be renovating the current Elementary school building to expand enrollment for Kindergarten-3rd grade to 100 students in each grade level, allowing greater opportunities for all residents of Statesville to attend ARS. Our Middle school building will now be home to our 7th and 8th grade students, while our Intermediate school will house our 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students.

The construction and renovation of our new facilities are projected to be completed during the 2022/2023 school year. As construction takes place, students in grades Kindergarten-3rd will attend school in the current elementary school building, and students in grades 4th, 5th and 6th will be located in the First ARP Church Educational.

Building until the Cooper Street Intermediate School building renovation is completed. Our longtime partners at First ARP Church have been generous enough to offer their educational building for our use during this time of transition. Students in 7th and 8th grade will remain in the middle school building.

Looking to the future

ARS is excited to grow into our downtown Statesville campus. The school has continued to evolve and grow since its conception in 1998, and these changes will allow ARS to increase STEM and art education resources for the students, as well as athletic opportunities and community partnerships.

Parent Town Hall

We will host a town hall for parents on Thursday, July 21st at 10 am at ARS Middle School. This will include a visual presentation of the information we have shared with parents and the ability to interact with ARS staff and members of the Board of Directors regarding this new and exciting chapter in our ARS history and downtown Statesville.