Johnston High School students and faculty will be in for a treat when they begin classes in their brand-new building a year from now. 

Now about half-completed, the 369,000- square-foot high school building is already impressive, as I found from a recent tour. With its open design and attention to detail, the completed facility will more closely resemble an attractive corporate headquarters or college campus building than traditional school buildings that were built just a generation ago.  

The new school building is “already a source of pride in the community,” said Johnston High School Principal Ryan Woods, adding that he has received a lot of positive feedback following community tours of the project. “I can tell you from past experience it just immediately changes the whole culture.” 

Smart design for easy navigation, functional utility and energy efficiency are some of the hallmarks of the $77.6 million facility, which will accommodate 1,600 students when classes begin there in the fall of 2017. The school is being built for up to 1,800 students. 

“I think the hope is that it will be a long time before we reach the capacity of the high school,” said Corey Lunn, superintendent of Johnston Community School District. “The whole plan was that this will sustain the needs of the school district for a long time.” 

Three classroom wings connected by exterior courtyards allow for plenty of windows and daylight exposure in the building, which will also feature a state-of-the-art 1,200-seat auditorium as well as a black-box theater for smaller performances. 

Some of the other key features include state-of-the-art science labs, an airy media center that will have views from two directions onto the school grounds, and a band room that can accommodate the entire marching band with exterior access directly to the sports fields. Several classrooms in each wing will be equipped with moveable partitions to create larger classes when needed. 

The layouts of the classroom locations in each wing will repeat from upper to lower floor and from wing to wing to make it easier for students and faculty to learn and navigate the building, said David Dominguez, the project manager with Stahl Construction, the general contractor for the project. They’ll also be color-coded with three different colors — blue, gold and green — to help students distinguish between the wings. 

“School is complicated enough, we’re trying to keep everything simple,” Dominguez said. “The architects have done a great job at this. (The architecture firm) FRK has really done a good job with design and in keeping the school’s budget in mind. We’ve been pleased to partner with them.”  

The energy-efficient building, which will use LED lighting throughout, will be heated and cooled with one of the largest underground geothermal systems to be installed in the state. It’s also probably the first school in the state to incorporate the newest generation of high-volume, low-velocity air handling systems for the air conditioning and heating, which makes the system more comfortable, cleaner and energy-efficient, Dominguez said. 

The new school’s furniture will all be movable and suited for collaborative work. And the hallways and common spaces will have different types of finishes, from tile and stone veneer to plaster and brick.

“The finishes, the colors really represent what you would see in a business environment,” Supt. Lunn said. “That was on purpose to get kids used to the world of work.”  

Other new aspects of the building are the teachers’ workspaces. Rather than staying in one classroom throughout the school day, teachers will have collaborative office spaces — one upstairs and one downstairs in each of the three wings — for use when they’re not teaching. Those spaces won’t have any walls or partitions, allowing for collaboration and idea sharing among the teachers. Adjoining small conference rooms will provide areas for students to meet with teachers.

“This building lends itself to collaboration,” Woods said. “The building really has a focus around people working together and having the right conversations, which is about kids. I think our teachers are excited about it already. They’re pretty fired up about the space we’ll have and how they’ll be able to use it.”

Project funded by property tax and revenue bonds 

Stahl Construction, which is based in Minneapolis with an office in Urbandale, also will manage the pre-construction and construction of the recently approved football stadium at the new Johnston High School. Additionally, the contractor will manage the conversion of the former high school into a middle school, the conversion of a middle school to an elementary school, and the conversion of an elementary school to an administrative resource center. 

“Almost half of our work is in education, including work for universities,” said David Dominguez, Stahl’s project manager for the new high school. “It’s one of our major sectors, but we do work in just about every other sector, other than hospitals.” 

The new high school is being paid for with a combination of general obligation bonds and sales tax revenue bonds. Of the total $77.5 million project cost, $41 million in general obligation bonds have been issued, which equates to a $1 increase in the annual property tax rate for schools, Johnston Superintendent Corey Lunn said. The remainder of the funding is financed through the issuance of sales tax revenue bonds. 

Funding needed for the school renovation projects, which will total an additional $23.5 million, will be paid for by additional sales tax revenue bonds that will be issued as needed for the projects, Lunn said.

Source: FRK Architects + Engineers/Perkins + Will
Aerial view from southeast