Construction on a new Highland High School will begin Monday, the first step in a full rebuild Salt Lake City School District voters approved in a bond issue last fall, the district announced.
District spokesperson Yándary Chatwin said the preliminary site work will focus on the south end of campus, where crews will add parking and lighting to prepare for the official groundbreaking in spring 2026.
“When they get to that first phase, some of the parking that currently exists will be taken out, because the school is being built closer to 2100 [South,] and that’s where a lot of parking is right now,” Chatwin said.
Work will continue through the summer and finish before school starts in August, Chatwin said.
During construction, the tennis courts and driver’s education area in the school’s south parking lot will be temporarily removed, the district said.
Highland’s tennis teams will use the new courts at the former Rosslyn Heights Elementary School site, which sits about a half a mile east of Highland at 2291 S. 2000 East, the district wrote to parents and community members.
Chatwin said the district is converting the Rosslyn Heights campus into an athletic complex with tennis courts, a soccer and lacrosse field, locker rooms and bathrooms. While the complex will primarily serve Highland High School athletics, it will be open to the public when students aren’t using it, she said.
The full Rosslyn athletic complex will be ready later this summer, in time for the fall tennis season, the district said.
The driver’s education program will operate from a temporary location this summer, though Chatwin said she doesn’t yet know where that will be. She said students enrolled in the program will receive more information directly from the school and program staff.
“We knew that this was coming, so we prepped an alternate site, knowing that one of the first things that would be taken out would be the tennis/driver’s ed area of the campus,” Chatwin said.
Chatwin said she didn’t know whether any additional preliminary site work would take place during the school year, but noted that the district aims to let construction affect students as little as possible.
“One of the reasons that the board voted for this, the specific plan that we have, is because it wouldn’t disrupt the academics at the high school,” she said. “While the project was ongoing, we wanted to make sure we didn’t have kids in portables for seven years.”
The rebuild comes after years of planning for what officials have called much-needed upgrades for West and Highland high schools.
Voters approved the school district’s $730 million bond in November to pay for the rebuilds.
The Highland rebuild is expected to cost between $295 million and $310 million, take about five years to complete and will be carried out in two phases.
Design plans approved in December have Highland’s main building moving to the north end of the property, closer to 2100 South.
