The Cheney School District recently awarded a $179,500 contract to Mountain Crest Enterprises Inc., of Mead, to perform preliminary site work for construction of a planned new elementary school next year.

The West Plains district's new school is to be located on a 10-acre parcel of land at 6323 S. Holly Road, in Cheney, which it purchased about a year ago for $523,000. Designed by Spokane-based NAC|Architecture, the district has estimated that the facility will cost between $16 million and $17 million to construct.

The planned 55,550-square-foot elementary school is designed to accommodate a capacity of 500 students from kindergarten to fifth grade, says Jeff McClure, the district's director of operations, maintenance, and safety.

McClure says the district plans to advertise for competitive bids for a general contractor next March. Work would begin shortly after a contract is awarded so that the new school could open to students by the start of the school year in the fall of 2013, he says.

The construction of the new elementary school, which has yet to be named, is being funded by a $79 million bond measure voters in the district passed early last year.

The district said last year its four existing elementary schools are overcrowded and that the district's student population continued to grow, prompting the need for a fifth elementary school. McClure says the district's student population increased again this year.

The Cheney district also is in the process of constructing two new middle school buildings to accommodate an increasing number of students in those grades. McClure says that both of those projects are on schedule and should be completed as planned by the fall of 2012.

Spokane-based Lydig Construction Inc. is the contractor for one of those new schools, located at 2716 N. Sixth, in Cheney, and Garco Construction Inc., also of Spokane, is building the second middle school, at 740 Betz Road.