District leaders and construction supervisors meet weekly with the architects designing West High School to review design ideas and address the many needs that come with building new comprehensive high schools. Over the past few months, we’ve worked in close partnership with each school’s administrative team, who have participated in regular design meetings, and invited educators to help design classrooms that have specific needs, such as special education or career and technical education (CTE) classrooms.

There are three phases in the school design process:

• Schematic Design – defines the general scope, scale, and relationships of the project.
• Design Development – adds detail to the design and begins coordination of building systems.
• Construction Documents – creates a complete set of instructions for construction.

We are nearly finished with the Schematic Design phase. We now have a strong sense of the basic footprint and the planned placement of key components – gym, theater, classrooms, administrative offices, cafeteria, science labs, CTE classrooms, and more – within that layout.

Our current estimate is that final designs will be completed by the end of 2025, with construction on the new high school beginning in spring 2026.