BEAVERTON, Ore. — Beaverton School District’s newest high school, Mountainside, welcomed another class of freshmen Monday.
The school opened for the first time last year with only freshmen and sophomores.
Now, more than 1400 students will fill the hallways when everyone shows up for class on Tuesday.
The modern building is state-of-the-art, built with $186 million from Beaverton school district taxpayers.
The campus stretches over 47 acres and includes a football stadium with seating for more than two thousand, tennis courts, soccer fields and baseball diamonds.
But its what is happening inside, creating an inclusive culture, that excites students like Jasmin Abdallah, a junior.
“I mean, at this school we even do birthday grams. And we're now even going to have a student of the month. Which is gonna be really fun. That's definitely my favorite part,” she said.
The school is big with 342,000 square feet of space. It includes 53 classrooms, 11 science rooms, and five special education classrooms.
Mountainside offers a variety of educational programs including technical training courses in construction, marketing and culinary arts.
It also is an International Baccalaureate Diploma School (IB).
Principal Todd Corsetti said the goal is to achieve excellence in all areas at Mountainside.
“When you open a new school you try to be the best of the best. And we have tremendous schools in the area that we model ourselves after but also help us because we can also take the best from all of those schools,” he said.
As the high school grows, so too does its surrounding community.
Mountainside is on the south side of Cooper Mountain. Development seems to be everywhere with fields literally across the street from the high school under construction for new housing.
Next year, Mountainside will add another freshman class and be near its capacity of 2200 students, making it one of the ten biggest high schools in Oregon.