Get a look at Texas City's new high school

TEXAS CITY — As she looked around the $54 million campus, Kyandi Lambright, 12, already was counting the days until she, too, gets to roam the halls of the new Texas City High School.

The 375,000-square-foot high school campus was opened to the public Sunday for a sneak peek before it opens for classes Jan. 4. The new campus is located at 1431 Ninth Avenue North.

“A year and a half,” Lambright, a Texas City seventh-grader who is on schedule to graduate high school in 2017, said.

She’ll be just the latest member of her family to be a Texas City High School alumnus. Her brother Kristian Lambright, 15, is a Texas City High School freshman and will join his classmates in the new high school in January as well.

Younger brother Kameren Hardebeck, 8, is in second grade, but was looking forward to graduating in 2022.

All three siblings are music lovers, so the expansive band hall with several practice rooms, high-tech sound system and plenty of room to store uniforms and equipment was, in particular, an exciting design within the campus.

The band hall was dedicated to former Texas City High School band director Robert Renfro, who directed the Stingaree band in the 1960s and ’70s.

Mom, Candy Hardebeck, class of 1995, was a bit envious having attended the old high school that opened its doors in 1957.

“You see the Stingaree spirit alive all over,” she said of the new campus that features touches of the school colors of orange and black and multiple displays of the school’s Stingaree mascot, even notched into the new desks.

The 1,600-plus high school students who got their first upclose look at the campus Wednesday were equally as impressed. Already, students dubbed an open area near the competition gym as The Reef, school district spokeswoman Melissa Tortorici said.

“It’s like going from a Pinto to a Cadillac Escalade,” high school principal Mark Chatham said of the new campus.

The high school is the gem of a $121 million bond proposal voters approved in 2007. That bond also included:

• Construction of a new Kohfeldt Elementary and Levi Fri Intermediate campuses;

• Construction of a new administration building;

• Upgrades to technology throughout the district; and

• Renovation projects at the stadium and at Heights, Northside and Roosevelt-Wilson elementary schools.

The project came under budget by about $7 million, said Jack Haralson, the school district’s construction manager.

The campus has the expanded area for fine arts, more than a dozen dedicated science labratories-classrooms and several computer labs.

The auditorium, which is dedicated to John C. Martin, the longtime high school drama instructor who died in 1996, seats 650. There will be two gymnasiums on campus.

The new field house has a larger weight room and overlooks the south end of the renovated Stingaree Stadium.

There also are new tennis courts and a softball field on the campus.

But it’s the campus’ expansiveness that impressed Hardebeck.

“What I really liked were the (larger-) sized classrooms,” she said. “It doesn’t feel small, it feels big and grand.”

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By The Numbers

LOCATION: 1431 Ninth Avenue North in Texas City.

COST: $54 million ($7 million under budget)

SQUARE FEET: 355,000

CLASSROOMS: 64

COMPUTER LABS: 6

SCIENCE LABS: 14

AUDITORIUM SEATS: 650

PARKING: 3 front lots with 500 spaces with 14 handicapped spots. Back lot with 148 spots and 12 handicap spots

FIRST DAY OF CLASS: Jan. 4

SOURCE: TCISD