Fox High School wants to show off its new addition.
The school, at 751 Jeffco Blvd. in Arnold, will hold a grand-opening event at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 26. The event will start in the main gym and be followed by tours of a three-story addition completed before the start of this school year.
The event is open to the public.
“We hope to see a lot of community members, parents who have not seen it yet, alumni and maybe even some future Warriors who are in elementary or middle school,” assistant principal Joe Salsman said.
Principal Ryan Sherp will welcome attendees, and then a video about the school’s history from 1955 to the present will be shown, Salsman said.
After the video, members of the Student Council will lead groups of eight to 10 people through the addition.
“It is something we are very proud of,” Salsman said. “It is the first new addition we have had at Fox High School since the early 2000s. We want our community members and alumni to know what we spent our taxpayers’ dollars on and how beautiful it turned out.”
The addition includes 20 new science classrooms on the second and third floors, as well as art and family and consumer sciences (FACS) classrooms and a child development room on the first floor.
The entrance to the three-story structure is on the north side of the high school and has the words Leo C Peck Media Center, the name of the school’s library, over the doorway.
The first-floor hallway leads to the media center. The addition includes a commons area with display areas for students’ art and a showcase of the school’s history.
Students and teachers have been using the new addition since the school year started on Aug. 20.
“I love all of it,” Salsman said. “Our students love that they have new science labs, new cooking labs and all of that.
“The entryway is awesome. That (commons area) is probably my favorite area to hangout in.”
The addition, along with the conversion of the high school’s 12 previous science classrooms into traditional classrooms, began in May 2022. The project was funded with revenue from a $40 million bond issue, called Proposition P, that voters approved in in June 2020.
According to Board of Education documents, Fox’s budget for Prop P projects is $46,243,337 when combining money from the bond issue, anticipated interest earnings, a bond premium and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief II (ESSER II) funds received from the federal government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of Aug. 27, Fox had spent $46,045,554 of Prop P funds for projects that also included building additions and renovating rooms at Seckman Middle School and Antonia and Meramec Heights elementary schools. The district also used Prop P funds to build new playgrounds at most of its elementary schools and enhance security at most of the school’s entrances.
The high school’s addition was part of other renovation projects at the Arnold campus, which also includes a middle school, elementary school, alternative learning high school, Rickman Auditorium and the Central Office. As of Aug. 27, the district had spent $16,928,074 on the Fox campus project, which is $892,874 more than the original projected cost of $16,035,200, according to Board of Education documents.
However, Fox anticipates recouping a portion of the money because of change orders that were due to omissions by Cordogan Clark, the architect firm that designed the improvements to the campus and the high school addition, Superintendent Paul Fregeau has said.