MADISON, Alabama — Journey Middle School held a formal ribbon cutting and open house Monday. The 'Journey Jaguars' will serve students rezoned from both the Discovery and Liberty Middle School districts.
Journey marks the twelfth school in MCS, which now has three middle schools, two high schools and seven elementary schools, plus a Pre-K center.
Journey Middle School Principal Treva Stewart believes the new facility is extremely important for Madison City School's growth. "We're very excited to open Journey Middle School for the 23-24 academic year. Our faculty and staff have worked extremely hard. So we will alleviate the growth of Liberty Middle School and Discovery Middle Schools."
Journey is the third Middle School in the city of Madison. "So it's great to have this third middle school which we will feed into Bob Jones and James Clemens High School," she explained. Madison City Schools Superintendent
Dr. Ed Nichols said this year, they will start with about 700 students. "Next year it'll climb and we'll probably be up to the next two years 900 or 1,000. So it's just going to grow over time," he said.
Dr. Nichols added that there's been one common thread for 25 years of the history of the school district. "We grow and we grow faster than most anybody else in the state. We anticipate about a 300 more this year. That's been the average for the last decade."
So what else should we know about this 170,000 square-foot, $51 million-dollar project?
"You go in on level two, sixth, seventh and eighth grade, and then the extracurricular areas, media center, cafeteria, band, course drama. They're all on the lower level toward the back side of the school, and of course it has athletic facilities with it as well," said Dr. Nichols.