Built in 1984, LHS is Leander ISD's oldest comprehensive high school and has been expanded nine times over the last 40 years, Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Trimble said in an interview with Community Impact. The district is now renovating the campus’s athletic facilities as the first step in a multiphase project to ensure LHS meets the standards of the district’s newer high school campuses, he said.
The overview
Voters approved $23.5 million in the district’s 2023 bond election to create the LHS Master Plan Redesign and fund the construction of Phase 1, which involves renovating the school’s athletic facilities.
In February, the LISD board of trustees approved allocating an additional $32.3 million in capital projects interest earnings toward Phase 1 to move the school’s auxiliary gym from the back to the front of the campus next to the competition gym and performing arts center.
The renovated area will have its own entrance that will improve security by isolating all after-school activities to one section of the campus, former Chief Operations Officer Jimmy Disler said at a Feb. 1 board meeting.
The district began constructing the new auxiliary gym in August and will create an entrance to the gymnasiums and performing arts center, and build a new weight room this school year, Trimble said.
The district plans to begin further athletics renovations in the summer of 2025, with Phase 1 expected to be complete by the beginning of the 2026-27 school year, he said.
LISD aims to complete the project’s most disruptive work during the summer to minimize the impact on students, Trimble said.
The setup
Phase 1A
- Timeline: construction began this summer
- Description: relocating utilities for a future auxiliary gym and weight room additions
- Timeline: construction began in August
- Description: constructing an auxiliary gym and new weight room
- Timeline: construction set to begin in summer 2025
- Description: remodeling existing athletic facilities including locker rooms, showers and coaches offices
- Timeline: construction set to begin in summer 2025
- Description: remodeling the existing dance team space and current auxiliary gym into a wrestling room, and dance and cheer gym
The LHS campus layout has become disjointed due to undergoing several expansions over the years, Trimble said. The redesign is occurring so the campus can accommodate around 2,400 students in the same way a modern LISD high school campus would, he said.
“The building was built for educating high school students in 1984, and so a lot has changed, and this is a great opportunity to bring it up to the same specifications that we would be building a new campus,” he said.
The auxiliary gym may be used for practices by sports teams and will allow extracurricular groups, such as the cheer and dance teams, to expand. Additionally, the new layout will provide community members greater access to the auxiliary gym by moving it to the outer edge of campus, Trimble said.
Looking ahead
The district is in the early stages of developing a design for future phases of the master plan, Trimble said.
A Master Plan Committee that met in 2023 recommended future phases include relocating career, technology and education classrooms from portables to the inside of the campus and reorienting the school’s front entrance to the current backside of the campus, according to district information.
“Every ounce of that building is going to be touched in some way,” Trimble said.
LISD would need to hold another bond election to fund the construction of future phases, he said.
