Murfreesboro City Schools invites the community to an open house this Sunday afternoon at the new Overall Creek Elementary School.

The ribbon cutting will take place at 2:00 o'clock outside of the main entrance and the dedication will be at 3:00PM in the gymnasium. The school is open for touring from 2:00?4:00 pm.

Overall Creek Elementary School has an anticipated enrollment of 530 students this year, but with the capacity of 1,000 students.

Dr. Linda Gilbert, director of the city school system, noted, "Overall Creek's purple and gold otters are just getting

Access to Overall Creek Elementary School is off the wide Veteran's Parkway. To assure that nearby subdivisions are not inconvenienced with congested traffic, the Mooreland Lane intersection is being dramatically widened, all the way up to the school's entrance.

Student safety is integrated throughout Overall Creek. Since the school is two-stories tall, educators are able to stand at one end of the complex and easily see activities at the opposite end.

And with the school having two-levels, it is the same square footage of of the city's other 1,000-student campuses, but the roof is half the size. Plus, Murfreesboro's Johnson-Bailey Architects incorporated a gabled roof in the design, instead of a traditional flat roof. This should dramatically reduce maintenance costs.

The two-story complex is an educational dream come true. Each classroom has its own bathrooms, first floor classes have an emergency exit in each room, and giant 60+ inch touch-screen TV's will enable teachers to present videos to students in high definition.

Overall Creek Principal Don Bartch worked on site during the construction and kept the facility within budget, while making the campus a showplace for modern education.

Bartch consulted with teachers about whether tables and separate chairs or traditional school-chair-desks would be better? They chose desks with separate chairs. This enabled them to get aesthetically pleasing designs and colors while saving significantly over what was budgeted.

The tree-line across the back of the campus is where Overall Creek lies. Principal Bartch told us about specially designed education stations that would be created. On pretty days, classes would be able to go outside and study in these special environments. You could tell Bartch was passionate about this feature . . .

Again, the open house at the new Overall Creek Elementary School is from 2:00 until 4:00 o'clock Sunday afternoon (8/23/2014), and the public is encouraged to attend.