Loretto Elementary's 875 students will trade portable classrooms for permanent ones after Duval County Public Schools broke ground Wednesday, Sept. 30, on a $12.3 million building addition at the Mandarin school.

The project will add 15 classrooms, including a dedicated music room, along with a teacher planning room, as first reported by First Coast News. The new building is expected to open in 2028.

To make room for the permanent structure, crews will demolish 13 portable classrooms and two pod buildings on the campus.

The project also tackles a familiar headache for Mandarin parents: the drop-off line. Construction plans call for expanding the parent drop-off loop with additional stacking lanes designed to reduce backups during morning drop-off and afternoon pickup.

Superintendent Christopher Bernier spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony.

"We're gonna have a really amazing first-class learning environment here at Loretto to complement what already is a first-class environment, first-class educators," Bernier said.

Half-penny sales tax funds project

The addition is part of DCPS' Duval Reimagine Plan, a districtwide construction and renovation program guided by a Master Facility Plan the School Board approved in 2020. The program covers new school construction, renovations, upgrades and consolidations across Duval County.

Funding comes largely from the half-penny sales tax Duval County voters approved Nov. 3, 2020. The 15-year tax funds projects included in the district's Master Facility Plan.

The Duval County School Board formed an independent Citizen Oversight Committee to monitor the district's use of sales-tax revenue. The committee tracks spending and progress on projects included in the facility plan.

At Loretto, the project will replace temporary classroom structures with permanent space while adding a dedicated music classroom and teacher planning room.

The Citizen Oversight Committee continues to monitor half-penny sales-tax spending as construction at Loretto and other DCPS campuses moves forward.