Cypress Park High School will be the new, eleventh school in the Cypress Independent School Fairbanks District. The school is currently being built on FM 529 and Westgreen Blvd by Statterfield & Pontikes. This fall, an estimate of 3,000 students are expected to attend. As of now, zoning for the new high school has not been announced.

Unlike other high schools in the district, Cypress Park, will have a different, unique layout that will be built by PBK Architects. The 529,000-square-foot building will be three stories high, it will have a community building for fine arts, indoor athletic space, a dining facility and a central utility plant unit.

The new CFISD high school has already announced their principal for the fall of 2016, the current Dean Middle School principal, Chris Hecker. Hecker started out as a teacher at Langham Creek High School for seven years before becoming assistant principal at Dean Middle School for two years. Hecker helped open Cypress Woods High School for two years as assistant principal before being promoted to director of instruction, within the year he later became head principal of Dean Middle School.

In other news about Cypress Park High School the official school colors will be black and gold and students will choose the school’s mascot.

In relation to opening a new school assistant principal Kimberly Mcdonald gives her input on what it was like to open Cypress Ridge for the first time.

“It is a lot of work, a lot of long hours, a lot of preparation , a lot of establishing procedures,  processes communication with teachers and students it’s just starting from the ground up,” Mcdonald said. “It’s a lot a lot of hard work a lot of long hours a lot of collaborating to try and figure things out.”

Every new school will have its ups and downs McDonald describes what it was like at Cypress Ridge in comparison as to what it will be like at Cypress Park high school for the first time.

“I think the highs were it was a great opportunity to and I’m going to say it’s some of the highs and some the lows too,” Mcdonald said. “We got students from seven different schools and it was trying to   create and I’m going to say the high we were able to build and create our own culture here at Cy Ridge what makes Cy Ridge, we started from the bottom up. The lows was bringing the seven school of kids together because not everyone wanted to be here and it was working through that and I say lows as more as challenges it was just the hours and hours we had to put in to make it happen was more of the tougher parts.”

In the long run the hard work and dedication pays off for the time being and a name of the school stands for what it was made out of and represents as a whole.

“I have been here 14 years,” Mcdonald said. “I love this school, I love the culture in this school and the thought of going anywhere else or doing anything else is scary because I’ve been a part of this place since it opened.”