Maryville school district looks toward upcoming projects

Maryville school district looks toward upcoming projects 

Daily Times 

By: Shanon Adame 

7/15/25 

 

With the Maryville High School expansion underway, the school district is looking forward to a few other district improvements in the next few years. 

Coming up in the 2025-2026 school year, the system is relocating tennis courts from MHS to the John Sevier tennis courts, building new track and baseball buildings, renovating Sam Houston Elementary and converting the old Maryville Academy building into a space for the Early Intervention Center. All projects are projected to be completed within the next school year and funded with school funds. 

 

The high school originally had five tennis courts on its campus, as well as a football field. Sports like baseball, softball, and track all take place off-campus at various locations, Director of Schools Mike Winstead explained. 

 

With the MHS expansion, the tennis courts will need to be removed. Winstead said that, working with Parks and Recreation, they decided to add tennis courts to the John Sevier Park Tennis and Pickleball complex. 

“We did have the opportunity to, at John Sevier, to purchase the land adjacent to John Sevier Park, and gave us room to build three more courts,” he said. 

The tennis courts will become part of the park and will be available for the public to use when not in use by the school. 

“We’re 90% or more done. They’ll be finished, if not by the end of the month, certainly within the first week or two of August,” Winstead said. 

Track and baseball 

Track and baseball take place at Coulter Grove Intermediate School. 

“For 100 years, we were using all the parks. We played baseball at Sandy Springs, softball at Everett. Never had a track. We just did away match meets and didn’t have soccer. And so, all in the last 15 years, we’ve built soccer and softball at John Sevier, track and baseball at Coulter Grove, and then now tennis at John Sevier,” Winstead told The Daily Times. 

Winstead said he thought that having the practices and meets away from the schools added to the connection between the schools and the city. 

The last piece to the puzzle for track and baseball, Winstead said, was adding dressing rooms and bathroom facilities. 

With no place to change and store backpacks, students are forced to use the bus or cars to change into sports uniforms and clothing. Winstead also said the bathroom facility for the students to use is currently across the street. 

In addition to dressing rooms and bathrooms, the district will also add a concession stand and press box overlooking the track. 

Winstead said the project should be completed in the first or second week of August. 

Upcoming projects 

When the district renovated Fort Craig and moved their district office into the building, they also moved Maryville Academy from John Sevier Elementary to the newly repurposed building. 

The old Maryville Academy building on the JSE campus will be renovated and used for the district’s Early Intervention Center, which serves three and four-year-old students with special needs. 

EIC is currently housed in portables on the JSE campus, Winstead said. 

“We hope to break ground on that this fall — we’re very close to being done with the design — and have that ready for next school year,” he said. 

The district is also looking toward another expansion, this time with Sam Houston Elementary School. 

“That’s going to be our big one. That’s our biggest one that we’ve ever done in-house funding-wise and scope-wise,” Winstead told The Daily Times. 

In its current state, Winstead explained that SHES is about two-thirds the size of the district’s other elementary schools. The plan, he said, was to add about 30,000 more square feet to the building. 

The renovation will include a new gym, 10 to 11 new classrooms and a new parking lot. It would also increase the capacity of the school from 480 students to 640, he said. 

Right now, the expansion is in the design phase. 

“If everything goes as we hope, we break ground before the school year ends,” Winstead said. 

At their last school board meeting, the district assigned $6 million out of their fund balance to go toward the renovation. 

 

Other projects on the horizon for the district, once they get past some of the expansion projects, are new roofs for MHS and JSE.