Matt Hamilton/Daily Citizen-NewsDalton Public Schools officials plan to "phase out" the use of Fort Hill School and move Morris Innovative High School, which is housed there, into a wing of Dalton Middle School, which will become Dalton Junior High School, after Hammond Creek Middle School is completed.

DALTON, Ga. — When Hammond Creek Middle School opens, it will kick off a realignment that will impact students at three other schools in Dalton Public Schools.

Hammond Creek, which is being built across the north bypass from Dalton Middle School with $47 million in bonds that voters approved last year, will be a sixth- and seventh-grade school. The contractor has told school system officials the school could be ready to open by August 2020 but it will more likely not be ready until January 2021.

Students in sixth and seventh grades will be moved out of Dalton Middle School into Hammond Creek. Ninth-grade students will be moved out of Dalton High School into Dalton Middle, which will become Dalton Junior High School and include the eighth-grade students from Dalton Middle.

And under plans approved by the Board of Education, operations at the Fort Hill School building and the Morris Street School building will be phased out, with the students at Fort Hill — which contains Morris Innovative High School — moving to the new Dalton Junior High School. The Morris Street School building houses the Northstar program, a Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support program for students with severe emotional or behavioral problems. Dalton school system officials say they have been having discussions with Whitfield County Schools and Murray County Schools, which share the Northstar program, for one of those systems to host the program.

“That’s a state program that leases the facility, not a Dalton Public Schools program,” said Chief of Staff Pat Holloway.

The phasing out of the Fort Hill School building and the Morris Street School building are part of updating the school system’s facilities plan, which is required by the state Department of Education every five years.

Theresa Perry, the school system’s chief financial officer, said the state was allowing Dalton Public Schools to use Fort Hill School, which had been closed several years ago, on a temporary basis.

Perry said that when discussing state funding for Hammond Creek, state officials said that with the instructional units (classrooms) at Fort Hill and Morris Street on the books, Dalton did not need all of the instructional units at Hammond Creek.

“There really was no need to continue to use those older facilities, so we chose to take them off of our facilities plan,” said Superintendent Tim Scott.

The Morris Street School building is more than 65 years old, and Fort Hill School is even older. Officials say they are expensive to maintain. But because of their age, the school system cannot get state funding to renovate and upgrade them. If officials wanted to do that, they could use only local funds.

“But we want to provide our students at Morris (Innovative) with upgraded classrooms and a nice facility,” said Scott.

Officials expect the combined eighth- and ninth-grade enrollment at Dalton Junior High School to be about 1,200 students, down from the current enrollment of about 1,875 at Dalton Middle.

“That would leave us with enough space to put the Morris Innovative students,” said Holloway.

Morris Innovative currently has about 400 students. Officials say Morris provides a “nontraditional, small-school setting with student-specific learning opportunities and a focus on Project-Based Learning.”

Officials say that when Morris Innovative is moved to Dalton Junior High School, the Morris students will not mix with the eighth- and ninth-graders there.

“Morris would be in one wing,” said Holloway.