Since Mission Collegiate High School (MCHS) began serving students two years ago, they have been housed in a group of portable classroom buildings located on the grounds of Mission High School (MHS). The MCHS students also shared some of the MHS facilities, like the library and cafeteria.
While not an ideal setting, the temporary campus arrangement allowed the school to begin serving students while the district worked through the challenges of finding a location for a permanent campus and designing a new building.
Construction on the new MCHS campus is expected to begin by July 1. If all goes as planned, the new school building will be completed next summer and ready for students and staff for the 2015-2016 school year. The new campus is being built on land the district already owned, behind and between Alton Memorial Jr. High School and Cavazos Elementary School in Alton.
“Due to the fact that MCHS uses an Early College High School academic design that is based on smaller student numbers, we are able to maximize the usage of land the district already owned,” explained Ricardo López, superintendent. “As an Early College High School, MCHS will serve up to 600 students, many of whom will actually take courses at South Texas College their last two years at the school. That means the campus does not need the same facilities as a traditional high school campus.”
MCHS will have 21 regular classrooms, four laboratories, and two computer laboratories. The total square footage of the campus will be 74,485. The campus entrance will be located along Los Ebanos Road between Alton Memorial Jr. High School and Cavazos Elementary School. The construction contract totals $13.6 million.
MCHS will expand to include grades 9-11 for the coming school year. When the new campus opens for the 2015-2016 school year, it will house all four high school grade levels (9-12).
Pictured are architect renderings of what the new MCHS campus will look like. The architect for the project is EGV Architects.
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