When will the new Lafayette High School building be finished?

The new Lafayette High School building is still on track to be completed in time for the 2025-2026 school year, members of the construction team told community members Monday night.

Lafayette Parish School Board members Justin Centanni and Hannah Smith Mason hosted a town hall at the current Lafayette High campus to go over updates to the construction plan and show off final renderings for the new Lafayette High building.

The new building will be three stories with around 300,000 square feet to accommodate around 2,300 ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th-grade students. The design of the school is intended to tell the story of a community that values education and the arts, while creating a space where students and staff are passionate to come to school.

“This school belongs to the community, whether you have children at Lafayette High or not or if you had children at Lafayette High or not, you’re the ones that are going to have to look at it everyday,” Centanni said.

The building remains on track to open in August 2025, though the final stage of the project — the demolition of the current school building — won’t take place until Spring 2026.

During the town hall, the school board members and project leaders addressed several issues related to the new school, including traffic issues, preserving history from the current building and athletic facilities.

The project leaders spoke at length on their plans to mitigate traffic issues during construction and once the new school opens. During construction, they are working to schedule deliveries outside of high-traffic times.

When the school opens, it will have a dedicated bus lane, which will likely help ease traffic caused by school buses in the mornings and afternoons. Mason said the district is also in talks with Lafayette Consolidated Government to get a traffic light near the school on Marie Antoinette Street.

“We’ve been in talks with the city about funding for that light,” Mason said. “There will be a light. We’re just talking about who is supposed to fund it.”

Centanni said that the school’s leadership is working to identify some parts of the current school building that should be preserved and incorporated into the new school, such as the lions and the signage in front of the current building.

The athletic fields — namely the baseball, softball and football fields — were also a big topic during the meeting. A project is currently in the works to build a new baseball field and softball field at Neyland Park, while the football field is slated to get new turf in the coming years. It’s unlikely that the Lafayette High Lions return to the homefield before construction on the new school building ends, Centanni said.

“I would say definitely not until the fall of 2025,” Centanni said.

The Lafayette Parish School System previously revealed some plans for the new school back in February when it released its annual report for 2022.

In the report, the district says the spaces will be designed to “energize students’ imaginations through uplifting experiences.”

Functionally, the design will allow spaces to be flexible and to promote collaboration. The building will use natural daylight to build a connection to the outdoors.

Safety will also be a primary focus, the report said. In designing the building, the district used Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design elements to remove blind spots and create transparency throughout the building. The design also creates a perimeter using concentric zones to cover interior and exterior issues.

In early 2022, school board members presented the proposed design to community members, saying that about 30% of the building would be for academic classrooms, 19% for performing and fine arts, 15% for PE and athletics, 11% for career and technology, 7% for food services, 6% for administration, 4% for a media center, 4% for special education and 4% for support.

The new school will essentially be at the same location as the current building. Construction is underway behind the current building.

The district did a survey in early 2022 to see if area residents wanted the school to remain at its current location or to move somewhere else. Out of 1,625 responses, around 89% wanted the school to remain at its West Congress Street location.

In 2021, the Lafayette Parish School Board voted to set aside around $48 million to rebuild Lafayette High, Prairie Elementary School and Carencro Heights Elementary School, which will be renamed Carencro Bob Lilly Elementary School. Debt issuances are expected to cover the remaining construction costs.

In September 2022, the board voted to ask the state’s bond commission for permission to sell around $190 million in sales tax bonds to fund the projects, though the district said it only intended to sell around $170 million. The extra $20 million allowed for some wiggle room without requiring the board to make an additional request from the bond commission.

The total cost of the three schools is expected to be around $215 million.

The need for a new Lafayette High School has been evident for years, with a facilities study in 1990 referring to the school as "hodge podge of buildings that are run down."

Lafayette High was one of three schools the school board has been prioritizing, along with Prairie Elementary School and Carencro Bob Lilly Elementary School (formerly called Carencro Heights Elementary School). LPSS recently celebrated the completion of Prairie Elementary with a ribbon cutting ceremony, and students began the school year in the new facility.

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This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: When will the new Lafayette High School building be finished?