New middle school in the works for Lewisburg

LEWISBURG, Miss. (WMC) - A new school is in the works for DeSoto County students to alleviate crowding.

Officials say they're seeing major growth and one area seems to be growing especially fast.

Each afternoon after school gets out in Lewisburg there are so many drivers on Craft Road an officer is needed to direct traffic.

“All the traffic converges on that one place in the morning and it leaves there in the afternoon,” Cory Uselton, DeSoto County Schools Superintendent said. “It’s getting a little tougher on the parents.”

This traffic is a symptom of a problem Lewisburg Primary School, Elementary School, Middle School and High School all have. They’re running out of room. All four schools are on one centralized campus.

“We’ve been adding on and adding on and adding on,” Uselton said. “We’ve adding classrooms there on two of the last three years.”

This week, the State Board of Education gave DeSoto County Schools approval to purchase these 77 acres of land west of Highway 305 for a new Lewisburg middle school.

That school will help handle a 13 percent annual increase in students the Lewisburg area expects for the next decade.

“That growth is going to continue and with Interstate-69, which opened up last year, we’re going to see more and more growth,” Uselton said.

“It’s showing you how much DeSoto County is booming,” Michael Lee, Desoto County Supervisor District 5 said.

Michael Lee is a DeSoto County Supervisor and represents the Lewisburg area.

He says about 37 percent of new residential home permits in DeSoto County so far this year are located in Lewisburg.

"It's growing in Lewisburg," Lee said. "It's hard to keep people from wanting to move to a county with good schools, you have excellent law enforcement, the education all that combined together it just makes a good community."

The new middle school is scheduled to open in 2021.

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