The new school planned for Enota Multiple Intelligences Academy will be built as originally designed, Delores Diaz, chair of the Gainesville school board, announced at a work session Monday.

Diaz said the board made that decision in a called meeting Thursday.

Diaz said she would “summarize” the board’s discussion and meeting because “apparently the posting (of the called session) was confusing to some people.”

The board agreed to delay the move of students and staff from the Enota building until May 2017 — when school is out. The new building would be expected to be ready by May 2018.

That is a delay of one semester — about five months — from the original proposal.

The board decision reinstates the first plan for the new school, which would destroy the current Enota garden and lower the top part of the property by about 6 feet. The dirt from the grading would go in the playground area and help level that part of the property.

The original plans, first announced in March, drew a concentrated opposition to the destruction of the garden.

Meetings with school officials led to a second plan that would have included a retaining wall around the main portion of the garden and building less parking for the school.

That was projected to cost $132,000, which Diaz and Gainesville City Schools Superintendent Wanda Creel noted was not in the budget for the new school.

About 40 supporters of the garden attended the May 16 meeting of the school board and asked for a delay in a decision on the school so a plan could be researched and developed that would preserve the garden.

The supporters also presented the school board with more than 1,200 signatures on petitions requesting the delay in the project.

Mark Fockele, one of the garden supporters and designers, said Monday night, “When you have a strongly stated opinion backed up by more than 1,200 signatures, that calls for some kind of real engagement, and we have not seen that engagement.”

Supporters also expressed opposition to the initial plan in multiple letters to the editor, printed in The Times.

Grading the property so that it would be level would serve several functions, Creel said in April. Those include meeting Americans with Disabilities Act requirements by keeping all facilities on one level; promoting better egress onto Enota Drive for leaving the campus; appropriate staging of buses and cars for student drop-off and pickup; and meeting requirements for emergency vehicle access to the building and all other state requirements.

The original plan also called for doubling the parking at the school. It now has just over 100 spaces, and that would be increased to 213. Part of the new parking would be where the garden now is.

The plan calls for new gardens in separate locations on the site.

School officials have said “preserving” the garden could include maintaining some of the plants at homes or businesses.

“We will have to select pieces of the garden that we can take out, transplant and plan to be able to put back in,” Creel said in March.

The new building would be two stories and would include 60 classrooms. It would include about 130,000 square feet, about the same size as the new school in Mundy Mill subdivision that was approved Monday night. That building will cost $17.4 million.

Money for both new school buildings would come from education special purpose local option sales tax V, which is generated by a one cent per $1 sales tax.

The public notice for the Thursday meeting, which was issued Wednesday morning, said, “The Gainesville City Board of Education will have a called/executive session meeting on Thursday, June 2 at 8:30 a.m. at the school board office located at 508 Oak Street. The board will immediately go into executive session to discuss real estate matters.”