Early Learning Center students singing the national anthem was only fitting for Elizabethton City Schools’ Board of Education meeting Tuesday evening.
BOE members voted unanimously to rename the Early Learning Center at East Side Elementary the Dr. Joshua Wandell Early Learning Center to recognize the work of the retired principal.
Dr. Wandell served as principal at East Side from 2007-15. During his career at the school, Dr. Wandell continued serving as principal for two years following his diagnosis with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2013.
Since his retirement, the former principal continued to stay active at the school while East Side regularly hosts the annual Race For Wandell event to raise money and awareness for the disease.
“Dr. Wandell is an inspiration to our whole town,” ECS Director of Schools Dr. Corey Gardenhour said. “He’s such an important part of Elizabethton City Schools, he means a lot to the East Side community and he enjoyed working with the children. Being able to do this with him will be a special day for our school system and special part of my career. I’m extremely grateful for what he’s done for the school system and the children at East Side. We’re really looking forward to seeing the community come out to support.”

A special dedication of the ELC will be held Friday, May 5, beginning at 10 a.m. and the public is invited to attend. The dedication will be held at East Side School.
BOE members also approved a motion to allow ECS to enter into an owner-architect agreement with Thomas Weems to work on the details for the demolition of home grandstands at Brown–Childress Stadium at T.A. Dugger Junior High School.
The demolition would be the first phase of expansion at the school. If plans go accordingly, once the grandstands go away, ECS will begin looking at an eight-classroom enlargement of the school to bolster the STEM program and allow full ADA-accessible.
“What we’re going to do is start working with the architect to develop a bid package,” Dr. Gardenhour said. “Then we’ll put the bid package out to see what prices we’d receive. After that, we would look at going before City Council to have the project approved.”
The Director of Schools added the system is hoping to have prices back by early summer for the total cost of demolition. Dr. Gardenhour added the system did receive an environmental study and it indicated there were asbestos and lead-based paint issues with the grandstands, which the school would look at through abatement before approving demolition.
No property tax increase would be seen by citizens, Dr. Gardenhour added, with ECS looking to fund the project from the half-cent sales tax funds.
“It would be an amendment to the budget,” he said. “When we get to that point, we would ask City Council to move the money over from the half-cent sales tax for the project.”
Dr. Gardenhour added he appreciated the support from City Council, especially coming off the recent tour of the facility by City Council members.
In other business, the BOE:
• Praised the efforts of John Hutchins and approved Dr. Gardenhour to enter contract negotiations with School Bus Logistics to perform a study of present and future transportation use.
• Approved an additional one-half position at Harold McCormick for special needs students.
• Approved a service agreement with TSBA for policy maintenance.
• Hosted a brief budget workshop.
• Honored various Elizabethton High School students for their accomplishments in sports and the classroom.