By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Alabaster’s new high school moved one step closer to welcoming students in January, after the city’s Board of Education voted to purchase furniture and weight room equipment for the facility during an Oct. 12 meeting.

School Board members voted unanimously during the meeting to purchase furniture for the school’s common areas and front lobby at a price of $366,943 and voted unanimously to purchase weight room equipment for the school’s two weight rooms for $81,463.

The weight equipment will outfit the weight room near the school’s auditorium and the weight room near the track facility, said Alabaster School Superintendent Dr. Wayne Vickers.

The pair of purchases marked one of the final preparations for the new school, which is set to open to students when they return from the Christmas break in January.

When the new high school opens during the Christmas break at the end of this year, it will be on a portion of 300 Board of Education-owned acres between the two roadways. The front entrance to the school campus will be off Thompson Road, while the back entrance will be off Kent Dairy Road.

The school originally was set to open to students at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year, but the opening was delayed due to a delay in bidding out the first phase of the project in 2015.

When it is completed, the new school will have room for more than 2,000 students, will have 103 instructional classrooms – 21 of which will be labs – a 1,070-seat auditorium, an 85-seat theater, a 32,269-square-foot career academy and a 50-seat lecture hall.

The new school’s cafeteria will see a major upgrade from the cafeteria at the current Thompson High School, as the new lunchroom will seat about 600 students at once, up from the 400-seat capacity of the current facility. Vickers said the kitchen will be designed to handle the increased student capacity, as the kitchen at the current school was only designed to serve 800 students.

Aerial photography courtesy of Skybama.com.