St. Paul's Academy Build High School

            St. Paul’s Academy is building a new high school across the street from their current location in the Birchwood Neighborhood on Northwest Ave.  The high school is over half completed and is on its way to opening for student use and the graduation ceremony for the class of 2011.

            The new building will be used for grades 5-12 and the current building will continue being used for K-4.  Currently 60 students are being housed in four portables behind the main school as they wait for the high school to be completed.

            According to Robin Frank, the Associate Head of School, the upper school is about 62% completed and the completed project will cost $13 million.  The money for the project came from a loan that the private school took out, along with numerous donations from parents, grandparents and the community.

            “We’re very excited about this,” said Marianne Johnson, the school secretary, “We’ve been waiting for this for five or six years.”

            The high school will not be open for students to use this school year, but the administration is working to get a conditional use permit so that the first graduating class of the academy may use the building for their graduation ceremony on June 10, 2011.  There will be three students receiving their diploma from St. Paul’s.

            Cody Purcell, 17, is one of the three seniors graduating this June.  Purcell has been a student at the academy since he was in 6^th grade.  He was in the first 9^th grade class the school had and stayed with the academy through his high school career.

            “I wish it would have happened sooner,” Purcell said about the new high school building.

Purcell remembered hearing about the larger high school building when he was in 9^th grade and they were preparing the lot for construction.  However, the production of the building wasn’t able to begin until March 2010.

            The upper school building will add 14 standard classrooms to the academy along with multiple labs for biology, physics, chemistry, art and music.  It will feature a chapel that can seat up to 100 people, a main commons area and a performance platform.  The new building will also provide a full-sized high school gym with bleacher seating for 225 people and locker rooms for the students.

            At this time, St. Paul’s Academy has 243 students, but will be able to enroll up to 500 students once the upper school is complete.  To apply to the academy, students must take an assessment test and complete an interview to make sure that the student and school are a good fit for each other.

            Both Frank and Johnson agree that there’s certainly a need in Bellingham for a private high school.