Osceola School Board names new Poinciana elementary school
February 04, 2009
POINCIANA, FL --- The new $14.6 million elementary school currently under construction in Poinciana is no longer a letter. The former Elementary School ‘L’ has been named Koa Elementary School by the Osceola County School Board.Scheduled to open for classes in August 2009, Koa Elementary will be the 15th neighborhood school (K-12) in Poinciana, the 47,000-acre master-planned community in northwest Osceola and northeast Polk counties which is home to approximately 70,000 residents and their children.
The new 2-story school at 5000 Koa Street, just west of Marigold Avenue, will have 110,727 sq. ft. of air-conditioned space made up of 50 classrooms with 962 student stations, a cafetorium with stage and seating capacity of 273, media center, art room, music room, computer skills lab, classrooms for exceptional student education (ESE), and administration and student services spaces.
Outdoor facilities will include a covered play area, a kindergarten and pre-K playground, ball field, basketball court, and soccer fields.
Koa Elementary is expected to open with an initial enrollment of 700-750 students that will help relieve student populations at nearby Deerwood, Chestnut and Poinciana elementary schools.
Avatar® Properties Inc., Poinciana’s developer and primary homebuilder, made it financially feasible for the School District of Osceola (SDOC) to build the school by making the 17.55-acre site, appraised at $2.4 million, available at a negotiated price of just over $832,000 which saved the SDOC over $1.5 million.
Over the years, Avatar® has donated seven other school sites (six in Poinciana) to the SDOC and was also the first developer to donate a school site in Poinciana to the School Board of Polk County. The company also orchestrated a land swap that gave the SDOC a more valuable and better suited piece of land for the new Liberty High School.
Avatar® holds a Champion for Education award from the SDOC for its community involvement and continued financial support of local schools, and earned the Florida Department of Education's 2004-2005 Business Recognition Award for its on-going commitment to the academic performance of Florida students and for its outstanding service in the field of education.
Avatar® also supports the Foundation for Osceola Education, the county's leading non-profit education foundation which sponsors several charter schools and provides college scholarships to deserving high school seniors.
In addition, Avatar® established Osceola County's first Educational Facilities Benefit District (EFBD) for Bellalago Academy, an A-rated charter school that is Florida's first charter school to be managed by a school district (the SDOC). The award-winning school in Avatar's residential community of BellalagoSM /Isles of BellalagoSM is leased by the EFBD to the SDOC with whom the Foundation for Osceola Education is contracted to operate and manage the school.
For additional information about Koa Elementary School, contact Bob Nanni at (407) 343-8659. To learn more about Avatar® and Poinciana, contact Tony Iorio at (407) 933-5000, or go to the company's website at AvatarHomes.com.
