BEAVERTON, Ore. — The Beaverton School District held a groundbreaking ceremony Friday for what will eventually be a brand-new Beaverton High School facility, located right next to the current school.
Friday's ceremony precedes construction on the $253 million project, which is expected to welcome in students in the fall of 2026. The new building will be three stories tall and cover about 290,000 square feet.
For the time being, students will remain in the existing Beaverton High School building.
"This is an old building and we really need new space — for teaching and learning for our kids, and teaching for our faculty," said BSD Superintendent Gustavo Balderas. "Having a new high school is absolutely important for our future, and it's going to be a modernized building with accessibility ... and we're just super excited for the opportunity."
Today's Beaverton High School is still, at its core, a building that first opened way back in 1916. The district tore down a slightly more recent addition — the Merle Davies Building, opened as a grade school building in 1938 and later added as a classroom annex for the high school in the '80s — earlier this year to make room for the new construction.
"It's been years of dreaming, and we're really fortunate to have a community that cares about our schools and be able to pass a bond, to be able to do this work," said Balderas.
Beaverton voters approved a $723 million school bond in May 2022, funding both the new high school and a rebuild for Raleigh Hills Elementary School, as well as a number of smaller projects throughout the district. Construction on Raleigh Hills is expected to start this summer.
