BY GRETCHEN KEISER

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--The Facility Group of Smyrna has been hired by the archdiocese as the next step in implementing the plan to build three new Catholic elementary schools and as many as two new Catholic high schools.

The company will provide program management services, according to Danny Jardine, senior vice president for Facility Program Management, Inc., a subsidiary company of The Facility Group.

This means that a team of people from the company will begin working immediately with the implementation committee of the archdiocese and other archdiocesan representatives to plan a prototype for an elementary school and a prototype for a high school, Jardine said.

The group will meet with specialists in various academic and curriculum areas, as well as physical plant representatives to discuss what kinds of needs are present in every aspect of the school and to envision how those academic and curriculum needs can mesh with a physical plant in the optimum way.

"We try to prepare a comprehensive document that addresses facility and curriculum needs," Jardine said. The document that is produced will be used to guide the architectural phase of the project. He expects the document to be produced by this fall.

The Facility Group is currently providing program management services for the Cobb County school system, which is in the process of a $20 million building program to add 1000 new classrooms to their system over the next three years, according to Jardine.

An engineer who has specialized in the educational area, Jardine's background includes seven years in the Gwinnett County school system before serving as an assistant superintendent in Cobb County. He said the team serving the archdiocese would probably be made up of six people, with the resources of The Facility Group staff of 250 available for specific facets of the project.

The Archdiocese of Atlanta this spring chose sites for three future Catholic elementary schools, one Catholic high school and a possible second high school. The projects will be funded through the archdiocesan capital campaign, "Building the Church of Tomorrow," and through a tax-exempt bond issue.

The proposed sites for the elementary schools are one at Post Oak Tritt Road in Cobb County, a second on Old Alabama Road in North Fulton County, and a third in Tyrone in Fayette County.

A high school has been proposed to be sited near the intersection of northwest Fulton County, northeast Cobb County and southeast Cherokee County. A second high school is under consideration at the site of the proposed elementary school in Tyrone.

The schools are being planned to open in the years 1999 or 2000 and would be the first new Catholic schools constructed in the archdiocese since 1986.

Jardine said that the program management services will focus on developing prototypes that will be effective educational environments for several decades.

"What we will recommend will support the instructional program of the future," he said. "We are going to design and build a building that will give ultimate flexibility as the curriculum changes over the next 30 years."

In addition, he said, the focus is upon maximizing the impact of the funds available to the archdiocese for building and launching the new schools. It is important, he said, "to "maximize where the money goes, and you want the money to go in the classroom."

The archdiocesan capital campaign is striving to raise a total of $32 million that will be used for Catholic schools of the future. Of that amount $12 million will be earmarked for a portion of the cost of building the new elementary and high schools. The remaining $20 million is to be placed in an endowment fund to benefit the entire Catholic school system, particularly through tuition assistance to families sending children to Catholic schools.

The other source of construction funds for the new schools is a planned $50 to $60 million tax-exempt bond issue to be sold by Wachovia and underwritten by Wachovia through a letter of credit.

The implementation committee for the new schools is chaired by George Aulbach, retired president and CEO of Laing Properties, and is composed of business, construction, real estate, financial and educational representatives. Subcommittees work in the areas of bond financing, building and engineering, school facilities and school administration. Aulbach has said that the committee has as its vision to come up with a school model that "is not only up with the times, but ahead of its time."