The East Grand Rapids Schools Foundation has made a multimillion-dollar, multi-year pledge to EGRPS to help with the high school transformation project. Several months before the start of construction in June, we asked the district about the plans.
Why do we need a new high school? How will this help our students?
When the current high school opened in 1964, most classrooms were set up with rows of desks and a teacher up front. Today, we know students and teachers need space to collaborate, conduct experiments, design, and create. The project began as a full academic renovation but evolved into a transformation and reconstruction project because of student, teacher, and community input. The new high school will have larger classrooms to facilitate the best teaching and learning practices. It will have much more natural light, which research shows is beneficial to students’ academic performance and emotional wellbeing. It will have dedicated spaces for robotics, the arts, maker spaces, and more. The facility is designed to meet our students’ needs now and the needs we anticipate over the next fifty years.
What’s the latest on the timeline for starting construction? When will people notice the project is getting started?
After years of planning, we’re very excited to break ground on this project that will be a positive addition not only to our school district but to our entire community. Construction officially begins on June 1st, 2026, and activity will rapidly increase in the late summer and early fall.
What are some examples of things the district has learned since planning started?
We recognized early on that modifying the existing building envelope would be extremely costly and would not meet our design goals. After about six months of study, it became obvious that starting over was the most prudent course of action for academic areas. The District prioritized the voices of students and teachers in the design process and learned valuable lessons about the specific needs of individual programs over the last 24 months. Examples are numerous, including how windows are positioned in hallways, instructional technology is mounted in classrooms, how science labs can be designed to achieve teaching objectives, and countless others.
It’s possible the high school construction will be happening at the same time as the big Gaslight Village project. Is the district communicating with the city and the developer of that project to share information?
The District has closely monitored plans and coordinated with city officials over the last two years for any potential overlapping areas of concern. At this point, the District is not concerned with any of the proposed Gaslight Village plans negatively impacting our construction timeline or logistics.
When do you hope the new construction part of the project will be complete and students will move into the new building?
Students will start to see the benefits of some renovations as early as the fall of 2027. Students will move into Phase 1 (the first half of new construction) in August of 2028. It will take another two years to complete Phase 2 of the project (the second half of new construction), with the fully completed transformation opening in the fall of 2030. We can’t wait until we get started, and we can’t wait until the project is finished. The transformed high school will be the new home of the next generations of Pioneers.
