The city’s fiscally troubled school system has endured headlines, heartaches and even hellish conditions. Come August 28, the start of the new academic year, a school construction project decades in the making will cast a bright light: the opening of a new $129 million Bassick High School, at the edge of the University of Bridgeport campus in the South End.
For students segueing from the current campus where the West End and West Side converge, it may seem like a rocket launch into the future, fitting that one of the many programs offered at the new facility will be aeronautical technology.
See a News 12 recent tour of the progress here
None of this happens without Bridgeport’s state legislative delegation, the largest in the state, jawboning peers and other state leaders to pony up most of the money to engineer construction of a 205,000-square-foot facility featuring auditorium, science center, library, athletic fields, fitness room, renewed focus on trades and new gymnasium for Bassick Lions sports teams.
The building has been raised to bring the first floor out of the flood elevation close to Long Island Sound.
Bassick is the last among the city’s flagship high schools to undergo a new home or major modern renovations. Plans are also in the works to build other schools, something Interim School Chief Royce Avery has highlighted to modernize infrastructure.
The Board of Education and City Council have set in motion plans to construct, at a combined estimated cost of $200 million, a special education center to replace Skane School in the North End and the vacant Harding High School would be razed and replaced by a new building serving students at Beardsley, Edison and Hall schools all in a state of disrepair.
The new Bassick will include these programs:
— Architecture/Engineering Lab
— Aeronautical Tech
— Advanced Manufacturing
— Automotive Repair
— Construction Technologies
— Liberal Arts
— Law Enforcement
— Firefighting
— Emergency Medical Services
— Homeland Security
— Military Sciences
