PHOTOS: New High School Ready to Welcome Students

Monday marks the first day of school for the Ankeny School District and not only will high school students embark on a new year, but they will do it in the hallways of a brand-new school.

The new Ankeny High School, located at 1155 SW Cherry St., is ready for students when the first bell rings Aug. 15. Students spent time this past week touring the facility and getting acclimated to the sprawling 275,000 square feet of space.

And as students and teachers get ready for the coming year, district officials finally get to take a step back and see how far they’ve come.

“This has really come together,” said Superintendent Matthew Wendt as he looked around the high school’s media center Wednesday. “I think we just might have a school here.”

It took three years for the almost $44 million school to become reality. Construction began in fall 2008 and now the building boasts 63 classrooms, a lunchroom with five different types of seating and a state-of-the-art media center, to name a few.

The school was built to house 1,400 kids but can be expanded to serve 1,800. Approximately 1,000 students are expected to be at the high school this year and next.

The facility boasts many new features and designs, all centered on accommodating growth and providing smaller learning communities for students. Each community – which will consist of approximately 350 students – has classrooms for all different subjects, as well as its own office, nurse and assistant principal.

“Students need a sense of belonging – we don’t want them to get lost or fall through the cracks,” Wendt said. “This will help students in a larger high school feel they’re part of a smaller setting.”

Incorporating natural light also is a big part of the school’s design, said Tom Penney with DLR Group, the architectural firm that designed the school.

Take the new high school lunchroom as an example. Large windows make up an entire wall of dining area, now big enough to feed students in two lunch shifts instead of six. Natural lighting is one of many features that make the building energy efficient.

“In spaces like this you can dim or completely turn off the lights,” Penney said. “Natural light was reinforced strongly by the faculty to benefit learning.”

The new high school has a 20,000 square-foot gymnasium offering seating on all four sides and a production kitchen that will service eight schools. The school also has a 750-seat auditorium and a three-mat wrestling room.

“On Sept. 6, we’ll hold the district kickoff in here,” Wendt said. “We’ve never had a space that can seat every member of the faculty until now.”

The first construction phase of Southview Middle School, located just to the west of the high school, also is complete and will house 10^th graders for the next two years.

The $15.7 million first phase of Southview will accommodate 600 students and will be expanded to serve a total of 1,050 students for the 2013-14 school year.

A bond referendum to construct the final phase of Southview will be put before voters in February 2012, Wendt said. If passed, construction will begin next summer.