The Richmond Heights (Ohio) district has broken ground on a $26 million, combined high school/middle school building.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that the district will demolish the existing school's gymnasium and locker room area this summer to clear the way for construction of the new building. The new facility is expected to open in 2021, 100 years after the existing school opened.
“It was built in 1921,” Superintendent Renee Willis says of the main section of the existing high school building.
The building also will contain a branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library and replace the city's existing branch. The library’s main door will be separate from the school, so that visitors don’t have to walk through the school.
The new building, which will house high school students on the second floor, and middle schoolers on the first, will also include a multipurpose space for community meetings, and space dedicated for senior activities.
The facility also will have a 1,000-square-foot room for an aviation program.
“Our students would see planes taking off and landing all the time at the (next door Cuyahoga County) Airport, but there’s so much more," Willis says. "They knew about being a pilot, but they didn’t about all the jobs there are in the aviation industry.”
The district has received a $700,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Education through its Expanding Opportunities and Career Pathways Division to help start up the aviation program.
