Redland Elementary School was needed.
As young families began pouring across Elmore County’s southern line in pursuit of quality schools for their children in the early 2000s, existing buildings were filled beyond capacity.
And while Redland Elementary only opened its doors for the first batch of kindergarten through sixth-grade students in August 2009, former Elmore County Board of Education (ECBOE) member Bruce Christian said it was needed before then.
“It was needed in the sense that, (Elmore County) was expanding so much,” said Christian, who currently serves as ECBOE superintendent assistant for special projects.
Christian oversaw the development of RES and added, “I served on the school board from 1980 to 99, and Redland Elementary was talked about in the early 90s. We had a plan that then superintendent, Roberta Pilcher, looked at. We were going to build a $6 million school at that time.
“This was probably a 10- to 15-year plan. It serves a really great purpose. It’s a great school.”
The initial total cost of the 75,000-square-foot school came in at $9.3 million, including the main building and the entrance road. The project funded, for the most part, through statewide bond issues that came from the Alabama Department of Education, along with a local board of education bond issue, based on school system population.
The land for the school and road was donated by the Joe Davis family/Precision Builders & Development Co. and the John Sumners family.
“The design was to pull students out of Wetumpka Elementary School, because they were to the point where they needed expansion. And there was a community you could encapsulate,” Christian said.
After county population continued to grow, Christian said they added eight more classrooms to Redland Elementary to stabilize the influx.
The building that once housed 650-700 students educates 915 to date.
And while it hasn’t always been a smooth road, Christian said he feels that the county school system has two great schools that came out of the process.
“We have an excellent school at Redland. We have an excellent school at Wetumpka Elementary. We have good administrators,” he said. “There’s always a problem when you have 1,100 students coming every day, but they are excellent schools. We want Wetumpka and Redland to be excellent, and we think they are.”
