A new middle school will eventually be built on the same campus as the Mason County STEAM Academy.

A new middle school will eventually be built on the same campus as the Mason County STEAM Academy.

The Mason County School District will have a new middle school by the end of 2022.

Mason County Superintendent Rick Ross said the new building will be about 93,000 square feet and will be located near the STEAM Academy on Clarks Run Road.

“It’s going to be state-of-the-art,” he said.

The building will have a two-story media/library center, which will be surrounded by unique classrooms. There will be a maker space area, computer labs and distance learning labs.

“The science labs will be state-of-the-art and have lab materials and will be a lab set-up that we don’t have now,” he said. “We’re going from 1970 to 2022.”

A major highlight inside the building will be two slides that will each be two-stories tall with a grand staircase in the center.

“There will be a spiral slide and a straight slide,” he said. “That will be very unique and it will be the main gathering area for students. It will be very different than what they are used to now.”

Ross said the district had intended, and had already, started remodeling the current middle school.

However, during documentation submissions, the state deemed the current middle school as one of the worst in the state for districts that had passed the nickel tax.

“We applied for, and received, about $20 million in state money,” he said. “We were essentially deemed to have the worst middle school in the state of all districts with the nickel tax. It was a very pleasant surprise for us to receive this money. It’s not taxpayer money. This is money the state had set aside.”

Ross said he hopes to begin the bidding process in the next couple of months.

Construction cost is expected to be about $22.5 million.

“What we don’t know is what the price of materials will be,” he said. “That’s an unknown factor that could affect the bids.”

According to Ross, the current building will not be sold and he hopes to not have to tear it down.

“We would like to see some non-profits that could use it,” he said. “We want something in there that would benefit the community. We don’t want to tear it down or sell it. We put a new room on and it’s a functional building.”