The Tomball (Texas) district is delaying the opening of a new junior high school by a year.
The Houston Chronicle reports that the school was originally expected to open in August 2020, along with a new stadium and elementary school on the same site.
Now, superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora says “unforeseen obstacles” have caused the district to delay construction.
“The new junior high was planned to open in August 2020, but challenges in acquiring land, the impacts of Hurricane Harvey on building code regulations, and county permitting have set our time back with the new junior high school delayed a year,” she wrote in a letter to parents.
The new school will relieve crowding at Willow Wood Junior High School. It is one of the construction projects included in the district’s $275 million bond program, which was approved by voters in 2017.
Chief financial officer Jim Ross says one of the disttrict's biggest hurdles was negotiating construction of a road that would lead to the school site.
The maximum amount the board approved for the construction of the new junior high school is $43.2 million.
