Fannin Students and Residents on Track for First-Class Agriculture Facility

News

Patricia DuBois, the Director of Career, Technical and Agriculture Education for Fannin County School System, proudly rolled out blueprints for the school system’s new Agriculture Barn last Thursday.  Barn, though, is probably too general of a word for the multi-purpose facility that the school system is building.  The approximately $3 million facility will feature a show arena, beautification area, grow out area, bleachers, concession stand, showers, animal science lab, classroom and welding facility.  Once finished, the facility will serve the community as well as the school by providing a place for shows, livestock sales, banquets, meetings and classroom space for Fannin County organizations and students.

The crème de la crème of the facility is its location, the Farmers’ Market on East First Street in Blue Ridge. It is next to the high school and a very short bus ride from the middle school.  The infrastructure like electricity and water are already there.  Most importantly, the site is flat and ready to be built upon.  Previous attempts to build an Agriculture Barn had been frustrated by the initial costs of grading and preparing land in horizontally-challenged Fannin County. Because of the purchase agreement between the school system and the City of Blue Ridge, which previously owned the land, events like the Harvest Festival will be able to use the Agriculture Barn.

The new Agriculture Barn has been sometime in the making. Ms. DuBois, Danny Shinpaugh, Fannin County Schools’ Facility and Maintenance Director, Superintendent Mark Henson and other Fannin schools’ staff have visited Agriculture Barns in Dawson, Pickens, White, Franklin and Habersham counties to get ideas of what features an excellent Agriculture Barn should have.  When explaining the blueprints, Ms. DuBois pointed out special features Fannin County added to the initial project because of what they had learned from visiting other sites.  For instance, the Concession area will have picture windows instead of just a small window for ordering.  This way, parents who are staffing Concessions will be able to watch their children competing in shows.   Other special features include showers and dressing area for show participants and wash out and grow out areas for animals. Even the elementary school students will occasionally use the Agriculture Barn for some of their Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics projects.  The school system expects that the Barn’s features will evolve as it is being built.

Financing for the new Agriculture Barn comes through funds from Education SPLOST.  When Education SPLOST was passed last year, the Agriculture Barn was one of the school system’s priority projects.  Constructing the Agriculture Barn will not put the school system into debt.  Mr. Henson said that a lot of times, people don’t get to see their Education SPLOST dollars at work because the money goes into purchasing technology or retro-fitting schools.  This time, though, Fannin residents will have a new structure that kids and the community can be proud of.  And, it is a structure that both students and community can use.    He also said that there is a lot of interest at the state-level for agriculture education.  This will help drive the quality of agriculture and technical education programs that Fannin County offers its students.

“When we look at something, we want to get the most bang for our buck.  The Agriculture Barn is going to go a long way in keeping kids in school because it will give them purpose and direction,” says Mr. Henson.

Construction of the new Agriculture Barn will begin in Fall 2016 after the Harvest Festival.  Construction is expected to take one year.  The Barn should be open for classes by Fall 2017.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to Top