The under-construction Southwest High School opened to visitors Wednesday, enabling them to do what is known in education as an "interim assessment" or checkup on what will be the Little Rock School District's first new high school in more than 50 years.
The 410,000-square-foot, three-story school at Richsmith Lane and Mabelvale Pike is about halfway done and is to open to students in August 2020.
The framework for exterior and interior walls is up. Neutral-colored bricks have been fixed to one outside corner of the academic building. Traditional stairways and three sets of wide, steep "collaboration staircases" -- partly for climbing and partly for large group seating -- are in place and functional.
Spaces for the auxiliary gymnasium and the 2,500-seat basketball arena are defined by an array of steel beams. The same is true for the 1,200-seat auditorium and other performing-arts spaces, including a black box theater and two dance studios.
From the third floor, district leaders point out where the football stadium, track, practice field, baseball and softball fields, and tennis courts will eventually fill in the school's 55 acres.
On this particular day, the spacious student dining area is yet to be glassed in but is furnished with long tables covered in the school's colors of purple and green.
A crowd of students, parents, business leaders and local government leaders turned out for a "topping off" ceremony to mark with an evergreen tree and an American flag the placement of the building's final metal beam. Lunch was served, and tours of the long stretch of a building were provided as part of the event.
The new high school is being built at a time when the district is working to comply with a September 2017 federal court settlement, and at the same time draw up plans for future closing, consolidating and repurposing of school campuses citywide to operate more efficiently with a smaller student enrollment.
In the 2017 settlement between the district and families of black students, the district promised no new construction or expansion projects until the new high school is completed and the existing Cloverdale Middle School is relocated to what is now McClellan High, which will be renovated. (The settlement terms excluded the establishment of Pinnacle View Middle School that was already underway.)
The settlement terms also call for new attendance zone boundary lines for the city's high schools, as well as expansion and promotion of Advanced Placement and gifted education programs.
Marvin Burton, the district's deputy superintendent for secondary education who has shepherded planning for the campus, told the Southwest High crowd Wednesday that attention has been paid to every detail in what he said will be a state-of-the-art facility.
Mike Poore, superintendent of the district that is in its fourth year of operating under state control, told the audience that the partially completed school is proving wrong those in the city who said the school wouldn't be built or argued that the school's $103 million construction cost is excessive.
"That is so far from true," Poore said about the 2,250-student campus that will replace McClellan and J.A. Fair high schools and take in some 300 students from Hall High.
Poore said the projected costs are comparable to recent school construction in places such as Benton and North Little Rock.
"Do the kids in southwest Little Rock not deserve to have walls that actually go all the way to the floors?" he asked, a reference to classroom walls and floors at McClellan. "Or to have heating and air conditioning? Or to have science labs where you don't have to turn off the gas after 10 minutes because the rooms will fill with gas vapors that are dangerous to kids?"
New construction and good spaces for learning will improve student achievement -- even if that is not easily quantified, Poore also said and added that increased numbers of career and technical education courses and more Advanced Placement courses will attract and engage students in school, and will benefit the entire southwest part of the city.
Sarah Bennings, an architect with the school's designers, Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, urged the audience to envision what will be the school's two-story library/media center equipped with the latest technology, its 65 standard classrooms in which furnishings will be movable to accommodate the lessons of the day, and oversized science and career-technical education laboratories.
Fair High School student Amari Doss and McClellan student Amiya Mardis told of their excitement about the features of the new school that will be home to the Gryphons, which are mythological creatures that the heads of an eagle and bodies of a lion.
"I believe we will stand as one and serve as a model for upcoming generations," Amari said about the merger of the two student bodies that will provide opportunities for socializing with new peers and for athletic team success.
Doyne Construction Co., Nabholz Construction Co. and Carson Construction Co. make up the construction management team for the school.
Metro on 10/18/2018