Rebuilding Albany High School
Investing in our students. Investing in our community. Investing in our future.
We are nearing completion of the transformative project to build the Capital Region's pre-eminent high school facilities! Please save the date of Tuesday, Aug. 26 beginning at 10:30 a.m. for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Albany High to celebrate the completion of the project's four main phases. The event will include opportunities for self-guided walking tours of the high school to check out all of the amazing new spaces that have been created over the past seven years.
Construction began in 2018 on a $179.9 million project to renovate and expand Albany High (voters also approved an additional $9 million for the project in 2023 due to significant increases in the cost of building materials following the COVID-19 pandemic). The project is adding more than 250,000 square feet of new facilities and completely renovating the previous 378,000-square-foot complex. The project will expand the school's capacity to about 3,000 students; Albany High's enrollment has grown from about 2,200 students when the project began to about 2,700 students today.
Phase 3a
Completed September 2022
Auditorium
- Includes a new 241-seat balcony and control room
- Includes 839 seats total (main floor and balcony), compared to 626 seats total in the original auditorium
- Acoustically designed wall features and treatments to generate optimal sound distribution for audiences and performers
- New theatrical rigging, lighting and audiovisual systems
- New expanded stage
Career & Technical Education (CTE)
All of these new CTE spaces are now located in the main campus
Cosmetology
- Equipped with a variety of salon equipment and stations, including:
- 20 styling stations with salon chairs; 8 shampoo chair stations; 5 hair dryer chairs; 5 pedicure chair stations; 3 manicure stations; 1 nail drying station
- Adjacent cosmetology classroom and small lecture classroom
- Expanded storage with product display and reception desk for greeting community on spa days
Automotive Technology
- Includes dedicated, adjacent lecture classroom
- Equipped with 4 car lifts, 1 alignment rack, work tables and additional automotive equipment
- Service room to allow program to serve community members who bring their cars in for service and repairs
- Acoustical design treatments to control noise and prevent sound transfer to adjacent spaces
Building Trades
- Includes dedicated, adjacent lecture classroom
- Supports a variety of equipment, including woodworking tools and welding booth
- Central dust collection system removes woodworking dust/particles from air and improves space’s air quality
- Features extra wide overhead door for moving large projects in and out of space
- Acoustical design treatments to control noise and prevent sound transfer to adjacent spaces
Health Sciences
- Includes dedicated, adjacent lecture classroom
- Equipped with 8 hospital beds, wall-mounted bedheads, exam curtains and additional training equipment to simulate a health care facility
Library
- The new Falcon library includes:
- Spacious reading and work area
- Digital area with 32 computers
- Computer lab with 34 computers, dedicated for media center use
- 4 group breakout rooms with digital display monitors for collaborative work
- Quiet space for independent study
- Presentation wall with digital display monitor
- Part of the existing building’s floor was removed to create a double-height space, highlighted by expansive glazing to maximize daylight into reading and work areas
- Variety of furniture options for students including traditional work tables, high-top tables, soft seating and perimeter benches
- New circulation desk is centrally located between entrance and exit to facilitate student check-in and media check-out process
- Book stacks distributed throughout space, including primarily low-height bookshelves to allow open sightlines within space for enhanced supervision
Other new additions
- New secure entrance on Washington Avenue
- Including secure vestibules for students and visitors, overseen by greeter windows
- Student entrance includes expanded interior screening area for morning entry
- Additional new office and classroom spaces:
- Main Office; Human Services classroom; 3 Media Art Labs; Apex Online Success Center; Family Consumer Science classroom; JROTC classroom; 4 General classrooms
Phase 2
Completed January 2021
Art wing
- 6 total art classrooms, including:
- 3 studio art classrooms
- 2 3D art classrooms
- 1 2D art classroom
- Expansive, north-facing glazing to maximize daylight into art classrooms
- Ceiling-suspended cord reels distributed throughout classrooms to support flexible power needs
- Varied options for art supply storage provided in each classroom, in addition to external faculty storage/work room
- Magnetic presentation wall included within each studio art classroom
- Paint spray booth provided within 2D art classroom
- Small group breakout room provided for flexible/independent studio work
Music wing
- 6 total music classrooms, including:
- 3 large rehearsal classrooms for band, orchestra and chorus (with 2 small practice rooms per space)
- 1 recording studio (with booth)
- 1 MIDI keyboarding lab
- 1 ensemble practice room
- Acoustically designed rooms to accommodate high sound levels of rehearsals
- Instrument storage provided within large rehearsal classrooms
- Recording/playback systems, with microphones and speakers, available in rehearsal rooms
The video below was released following the completion of Phase 2, and features students and staff discussing what this historic new addition means to them, and to the Albany High community.
Phase 1
Completed January 2020
New 120,000-square-foot academic building
- All classrooms exposed to direct natural light, demonstrated to improve student success
- Each classroom has its own heating and cooling controls
- All classrooms designed for maximum sound isolation
- Breakout rooms to allow students to work together and with teachers in small groups
- State-of-the art instructional technology
- 75-inch Promethean interactive panels in all non-science classrooms
- 86-inch Promethean interactive panels in all science classrooms
- Document cameras in all classrooms
- All teachers equipped with mobile and desktop computers
- Science classrooms on par with college facilities to provide students access to 21st-century STEM learning opportunities
- 30 computer carts deployed throughout the building, each with 36 Chromebooks
- Five computer labs throughout the building
- Environmental features to reduce energy use and costs include:
- High-efficiency LED lighting throughout
- Daylight harvesting system to control lighting
- HVAC utilizes a heat-recovery system that mixes the hot air exhausted from the building with the fresh cooler air being brought in from the outside to minimize the energy needed to warm the fresh air coming in
- Student lockers now wide enough to hold a backpack, coat, books, etc.
- Student bathrooms more conveniently located on each floor
- Gender-neutral bathrooms centrally located on each floor
- All water fountains include bottle-filling stations
- Open sightlines to improve supervision and security
- Academy suites designed to accommodate all student services in one location: administrators, guidance counselors, home school coordinators, social workers, behavior specialists
- Three privacy rooms in each academy suite to allow teachers and staff to have confidential conversations with parents and guardians
Want to learn more?
Director of Facilities Planning
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