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The Stanly County Board of Education on Tuesday night unanimously approved Pinnacle Architecture as the firm to help with the classroom expansion of Endy Elementary.

Earlier this year, Stanly County Schools sent a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for architectural firms that could design and plan for 10 additional classrooms at Endy Elementary School — increasing capacity at a school in a growth area of the county.

Architectural firms had until 2 p.m. Feb. 2 to submit details about the company, its history, qualifications, experience and references to Superintendent Dr. Jarrod Dennis.

During the meeting, Carla Poplin said the facilities committee had met twice last month to discuss Endy’s expansion and met with two architects.

“The committee felt that Pinnacle was the best of the two that were presented,” Poplin said.

A contract has not been created at this point and there is no timeline for when work with Pinnacle would begin, said Hope Miller-Drye, administrative and school board assistant, noting that this is still the beginning of the process.

The idea of expanding the school’s capacity, which has been discussed during recent Board of Education work sessions, is in part due to the passing of House Bill 90 in 2018, which required a gradual reduction in the average class size for grades K-3 over the next several years.

As of the 2021-2022 school year, K-3 classrooms had to have a district average of 18 students and no single class could have more than 21 students. Those are the same specifications for the current school year.

“Looking at the amount of kids that we have added on that side of the county and looking at the fact that Endy does have a dual language program … which expands the number of students that go to that school, we’re going to have to look at what it may look like if we were to have to add some extra space over there,” Dennis said in January.