Rincon City Council members paved the way for work on the planned Rincon Elementary School to start.

Council members approved the preliminary and final plat for the school, which will replace the Effingham County Board of Education’s current Rincon Elementary at Columbia Avenue and 4thStreet in Rincon.

City planner LaMeisha Kelly said everything except one item has been addressed. The outstanding issue is to have the city’s engineering contractor, EMC, sign off on a utility easement.

“The board of education is waiting on us,” she said. “They have addressed everything with planning and zoning.”

Matthew Renault of Buckley and Associates, the firm designing the school, said they are planning the entrances and exits so that cars and buses are not using the same paths.

“The bus entrance and exit is completely separate from the cars,” he said. “It will be kept separate from the car traffic.”

The current Rincon Elementary has a capacity of about 650 students, Renault said, and the new one, to be built along Fort Howard Road, will be able to accommodate

Under the school system’s projected timetable, the aim is for an August 2017 opening of the new Rincon Elementary School.

“They’ve got a tight construction schedule,” Renault said.