Butterfield School to Go Green

Great news! The 40-year old Butterfield Trail Elementary School is being redesigned for a planned renovation and expansion project to become Fayetteville School District’s first LEED Silver Certified green school building. That is excellent news, and the Fayetteville School Board is to be commended for that wise policy initiative.

The school facility will be expanded to accommodate a 35% increase over current enrollment, adding an additional 72,000 square feet and remodeling the older part of the building for classroom space. It will be an $8 million make-over project that will get under construction this spring and be finished by September 2009.

School administrators should also be applauded for demonstrating that older school facilities can be remodeled and expanded without any negative impact on the educational experience of the students. They worked with the architects and carefully developed a a plan to hold classes in different portions of the building for the 2008-2009 school year. When the new portion of the building is constructed, some classes will move from the older portion of the building to the new section so the old section can be remodeled.

We have complete confidence in the ability of our school board and administrators to devise a similarly efficient plan to avoid academic disruption during the expansion of the existing buildings at Fayetteville High School.