From the outside, the new Tahoma High School is built and ready to go. The tennis courts and fields are ready to be played on and the bleachers are waiting for fans. Minus the construction trucks and havoc, the outside of the school is done, except the parking.

The high school has been in progress since June 2015 and is projected to be completed with everything moved in by May, Lori Cloud said, project manager for the new schools.

“The school will be ready for teachers to move in by March. We are definitely ahead of schedule,” Cloud said.

Walking into the new high school was breathtaking. It is significantly larger than the current high school, with three stories and five stair cases to guide the new students around. The school is about 323,000 square feet.

The purpose for such a large school was to comfortably accommodate the 2,400 students that will be attending. This includes making wider hallways so many students can walk in the same hallways and without overcrowding. The lunchroom seats around 625 students, and the reason for that is so the school will only has one lunch period. Around the school there are also areas where students can eat lunch or hangout, which will help with one lunch period.

Aside from making the school bigger to accommodate all of the students, one thought in mind was a theme for the school. The first floor is going to have a water theme, the second floor a forest theme and the top floor a mountain theme with a large painting of Mount Rainier painted next to one of the staircases.

While making the school larger, practicality was something that was also kept in mind, Cloud said. Large rooms like the performing arts center that are not going to be used often, can be made into classrooms. The PAC was designed with the thought of it being used for classrooms as well as performances. Two walls can come down to split the PAC into three separate classrooms. The seats in the PAC also have small desks attached to them that can come up when used for classroom and come down when used for performances. The wrestling room is also another room that can have multiple uses. A thick curtain-like wall can come down and split it into two separate rooms so two different classes can be in there, whether it be gym classes or something else.

Large common areas were also built around the school for students to hangout in during free time or lunch. Some of the common areas have smart boards so science classes or other hands-on classes can have a large space to utilize instead of trying to cram big projects into small classrooms, Cloud said.

Technology has played a big role in the building of the school. Smart boards were put in to every classroom that can simply be used with a finger instead of a special pen. The teachers were involved in the design of the smart boards, how and where they wanted them in the classrooms. The choir has special rooms for singers to utilize that are sound proof and have no echo. Static resistant flooring was put in to the computer labs for when students are working on projects where static could interfere.

LED lights and special paneling throughout the school is going to help the school save money in the long run. The lights were made to save them money and last a long time. Special panels were put along the bottom half of the walls in the hallway so if students accidentally dent, scrape or damage the walls in any way, the panels can easily be replaced, instead of replacing whole walls.

And last but not least, some of the benches throughout the school were made from trees that were cut down at the construction site. The school is set to open for the 2017-2018 school year.