Rancho Cotate High School kicks off multi-year renovation project

The Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District on Monday kicked off a roughly $40 million, multi-year project to renovate its largest high school.

“It’s the start of something big,” said Superintendent Robert Haley.

Rancho Cotate High School is nearly 50 years old and needs a new exterior, greater Internet capacity and room to accommodate a growing student body, Haley said.

Students will return in the fall to a fresh-looking campus, he said. By then, a complete facelift of the school’s aging buildings should be complete, with chipped red and beige paint replaced by cream buildings with blue and red trim and flashy corrugated siding. New Internet cables and servers will also be put in place.

“It’s sorely needed. It’s time,” Principal Amie Carter said. When polled, students identified a beautification project as one of the school’s greatest needs, she said.

But while improvements to the existing buildings are expected to be finished by the end of the summer, the cornerstone of the project - a brand new, roughly 75,000-square-foot structure housing a theater, classroom space and a gymnasium - won’t get underway until the spring of 2016. It’s expected to be completed in the 2017-18 school year.

The so-called TAG building will add a band room, dance studio, weight room, locker rooms, a multi-court gym and six academic classrooms.

“The building addresses the urgent need to replace outdated and aging facilities while also accommodating the expansion of programs and anticipated growth at Rancho Cotate High School,” Haley said. The project is part of a district-wide facilities plan to “modernize schools, update technology infrastructure and ensure safe, well-maintained classrooms and facilities for all students.”

The TAG building will accommodate about 500 students at a time, significantly expanding the number of students attending the school. Currently about 1,500 students attend Rancho Cotate, but that number could grow by as many as 500 students over the next five years as multiple nearby housing projects come online, Haley said.

He said the school has already seen an increase in enrollment thanks to concerted outreach efforts.

The work at Rancho Cotate is funded by an $80 million bond, Measure B, which voters passed last year. The bond is also paying for major renovations at Thomas Page Academy in Cotati and technology improvements at Technology High School.

Staff Writer Jamie Hansen blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach her at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jamiehansen.