Blue Ridge School (North Carolina)
| Blue Ridge School | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| 95 Bobcat Drive Cashiers, NC 28717 | |
| Information | |
| School type | Public K-12 School (U.S.) |
| Established | 1975 |
| School district | Jackson County Public Schools |
| Faculty | About 30 |
| Enrollment | 293 |
| Campus type | Rural |
| Mascot | Bobcats |
| Website | Official website |
Blue Ridge School is a public combined Elementary, Middle, and High School located in Cashiers, North Carolina and is part of the Jackson County Public Schools System. It is the smallest school in the district and resulted from the consolidation of the larger Glenville Elementary and High School and the smaller Cashiers Elementary School in 1975. The building consists of three 100' diameter round "pods," which have no permanent partitions, with one hallway for each radiating into a central pod that houses a lobby and the school's front offices. The Gym is in one pod, and is cramped as the school has grown since the 1970s. It was originally designed as a futuristic experiment, with open classrooms, which failed, and they were divided with cubbies bookcases and portable coat closets. Grades K-6 have the older "pod" buildings. The school is very similar to Fairview Elementary School in Sylva, but Blue Ridge is smaller than Fairview, no stage and the library isn't in a pod, as well as having grades 7-12 in two detached classroom buildings, making up the "Virtual Early College" component of the school. The other schools with a high school program in the county are Smoky Mountain High School and Jackson County Early College. Blue Ridge serves the towns of Cashiers and Glenville as well as the communities of Sapphire, Fairfield, and Whiteside Cove with public education. The school has decreased in size since Summit Charter School opened with Kindergarten-8th Grade in Cashiers in 1997, leading to many who would otherwise attend Blue Ridge to go to Summit instead. The school was built as an experiment in the 1970s that was deemed a failure but it still stands with bookcases and portable cabinets added as partitions in the 100' diameter "Pods" or round buildings.
External links
- https://www.jcps.k12.nc.us/SCHOOLS/BRS/Pages/default.aspx
- http://www.publicschoolreview.com/school_ov/school_id/59737
- http://www.greatschools.org/north-carolina/cashiers/1047-Blue-Ridge-School/
Coordinates: 35°07′46″N 83°07′14″W / 35.1294°N 83.1205°W