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An architectural rendering of the 56,000-square-foot school planned for the St. John Paul II Catholic School campus on Camp Easter Road.

An architectural rendering of the 56,000-square-foot school planned for the St. John Paul II Catholic School campus on Camp Easter Road.

Plans for a major expansion at the St. John Paul II Catholic School campus will enter the town of Southern Pines’ review process this week.

Now in its 20th year, the school is in the early stages of a capital campaign toward the construction of a 56,000-square-foot school building.

St. John Paul has taught students in preschool through eighth grade in a 10-classroom modular building since 2010, when it moved out to Camp Easter Road from its original home at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church downtown.

The Tru-Legacy gymnasium and activities center was added in 2015, becoming the school’s first permanent building. A conceptual development plan submitted to the town for the 22-acre school campus shows the new permanent school situated between the activity center and the existing classroom building.

The Southern Pines Planning Board will consider that plan on Thursday, along with the associated request to rezone the property from Rural Estate to Planned Development to allow the school to move forward with its plans.

Infrastructure to support the permanent school building was installed as part of the activity center project, and the site is essentially shovel-ready as is.

The conceptual development plan submitted to the town also involves an adjacent 20-acre parcel once used as horse pasture and purchased by the Diocese of Raleigh in 2012. The plan outlines a new church on that property for a potential relocation of St. Anthony’s in the distant future.

That would likely be long after the school’s completion, which is still a few years off. St. John Paul aims to raise $8 million by 2025 to fund the first phase of its plan. The school already raised $3 million of that prior to kicking off its campaign this year.

At 220 students, St. John Paul’s enrollment has reached the limits of what its existing facilities can accommodate. The school turns away 30 to 40 families each year for lack of space.

Designs for the new building show a two-story school with 20 classrooms — enough for two classes per grade level — built around a central chapel, plus a science lab, media center, drama room, cafeteria and resource room.

Plans involve growing the school’s enrollment to around 450 within three years of opening the new building.

North Carolina is home to one of the fastest-growing Catholic populations in the United States. That’s not the only thing driving demand at St. John Paul, which is one of only three Catholic schools south of Raleigh. About one-third of its students come from military families, and almost half are from non-Catholic families.

As it stands, the school is technically not compliant with Southern Pines’ development ordinance for the Rural Estate zoning district. The town’s ordinances only allow for elementary schools in that zoning category, which was designed to preserve the agricultural character of the “Horse Country” on the outskirts of the town.

The McDeeds Creek Elementary campus just across the street is also zoned Planned Development.

St. John Paul’s feasibility study for the expansion indicates a construction period in 2024-2025 for the permanent K-8 school building. Beyond that, the school plans to install additional athletic fields and tennis courts in the following five to 10 years.

The overall plan also shows another 26,000-square-foot classroom expansion off of the Phase One building, but the expected timeline for that project is more than 10 years off.

Similarly, there is no set timeline for the adjacent church campus, which is shown on the plan as an 18,000 square-foot sanctuary and 7,000 square-foot- administration building accompanied by 500 parking spaces.

Southern Pines Planning Board is scheduled to review the proposed conceptual development plan for the St. John Paul Catholic School campus at 6 p.m. on Thursday.

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From 2017 to 2021 Moore County Public (Our) Schools' enrollment has stayed flat, even as Moore County is growing rapidly. While the Demand for and Enrollment in Private Schools is growing rapidly, and Homeschooling in Moore County grew 25% from 1,600 in 2020 to over 2,000 2021. I imagine that number grew another 25% to 2,5o00 knowing that every private school within 30-mile radius has a growing waiting list and no room.

Great news for Sandhills families - more school choice! You can bet that they will have books on Jesus Christ - not CRT and sexual perversion - in their library. And what a noble name for a school, in memory of one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, who with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher sent the Soviet Union into the ash heap of history of failed socialist regimes.

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