Take a look at plans for the Midlands’ newest school
What will the Midlands’ newest school look like?
Plans are in for the new Dutch Fork Elementary School that will begin construction in Irmo, putting the school between residential neighborhood streets off of Hollingshed and Kennerly roads.
According to design plans from JHS Architecture presented to the Lexington-Richland 5 school board this month, the school will be built in an X design that has become common for newer schools because it allows for a central point from which all wings of the building can be seen. Students will enter from two parking lots on either side.
There will be 26 classrooms spread across the four wings by grade level, from four-year-old kindergarten to fifth grade. Each will be about 700 square feet. The kindergarten classrooms will open onto their own secured playground space on the south side. The plans also include a 4,000-square foot gymnasium and a 4,900-square-foot cafeteria, with additional space for an optional 1,200-square-foot auditorium and up to 10 more classrooms.
The $41.4 million project was one of several approved in a 2024 bond referendum in the Lexington-Richland 5 school district, which covers the Chapin-Irmo area.
The process won’t be quick. After voters approved the construction of Piney Woods Elementary School in the last bond referendum in 2008, the school didn’t open until 2021.
As part of the changes, attendance lines in the school district are expected to shift for the 2026-27 school year. The district will eliminate its intermediate schools in favor of a straight line from elementary to middle to high schools. Because of growth closer to the Chapin area, Dutch Fork’s attendance line now stretches further west between Broad River Road and Interstate 26, including the Arbor Springs neighborhood, until Broad River crosses over the interstate near Broad Stone Road.
The new site on Hollingshed Road will be three miles by car from where Dutch Fork is now, on the other side of I-26. The planned 49,000-square-foot school will be half a mile from Hope Lutheran Church and around the corner from Northwest Family YMCA. Much of the surrounding area is already built onto into neighborhood subdivisions, including Chestnut Hill Plantation, along with the horse jumps at Creekside Farm Stables, and closer to Broad River, Richland County’s wastewater treatment plant.
But while Dutch Fork’s attendance lines might be shifting west, some homes near the new elementary school may be zoned for River Springs, which is a little more than two miles up Kennerly Road, or Oak Pointe, about as far up Hollingshed. All those schools will feed to Dutch Fork Middle and Dutch Fork High under the new alignment.
Dutch Fork’s enrollment last year stood at 442, although the new facility will have space for up to 550, and has a student-teacher ratio of 11-to-1. The student body was 52% male and 48% female, according to U.S. News and World Report’s school profile. Students are 39% Black, 31% white, 12% Hispanic, 3% Asian and 12% two or more races.
A third of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, the profile says, and 45% scored at or above that level for reading. Eighty-seven percent of Dutch Fork students are classed as economically disadvantaged.
Currently, Dutch Fork Elementary sits just off a busy stretch of Broad River Road, something Superintendent Akil Ross has considered a safety concern for its younger students, especially if a planned future expansion of the road takes a portion of the school’s frontage.
The district plans to keep the current Dutch Fork Elementary site as the Richlex Education Center. The new center will host adult education services currently run out of Irmo High, the Academy for Success now housed at Spring Hill High School and the online FIVE program, moving from Piney Woods Elementary.
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