Students Lead Groundbreaking for New High School

Before the shovels turned fresh dirt on the site of the New High School, six students from across the district welcomed guests, offered a land acknowledgement and shared their hopes for the future of the school.

“This school – this patient, hard-won, long-awaited beginning – will do what all great schools do: It will outlast us. It will hold voices we haven't heard yet. It will ask questions we don't know to ask. It will build people who will build things we cannot imagine,” said Mudra Machewad, a 10th grade Skyline High School student. Machewad read a spoken word poem in recognition of the groundbreaking along with five middle school students: Hyorin L., sixth grade, Pine Lake Middle School; Nathan S., sixth grade, Maywood Middle School, Kanon W., eighth grade, Issaquah Middle School; Milan O., eighth grade, Beaver Lake Middle School; and Anika L., eighth grade, Pacific Cascade Middle School.

“Here is the question no textbook will ask you – the one that shows up for every student at some point: Can I do this? Will I be ready? Will I have what I need?” Nathan said, continuing the poem. “This school does not promise easy answers. It promises something more lasting: The ability to keep asking, to keep growing, and to keep becoming ready.”

Due to site constraints and active construction, a limited number of students, families, staff and community members were invited to help the Issaquah School Board mark the occasion on the morning of April 24, 2026. We anticipate inviting the whole community to the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the New High School in the fall of 2027. The new building will help ease overcrowding at the high school level.

“Today feels meaningful in a way that’s hard to fully capture in words alone,” said A.J. Taylor, School Board President. “Not because of the ceremony itself, but because of what this moment represents for our students, our families and this entire community. For many of you, this has been years in the making and part of a long journey to get here.”

Taylor thanked the community members who attended meetings about the New High School through the years, asking hard questions and staying engaged in the process. He acknowledged the delays and challenges between the original passing of the bond for the New High School in 2016 and today, when the project officially broke ground.

“Over the past decade, there were moments when this project could have stalled, but through every step, one constant has remained: our students,” Taylor said. “To those who supported this school from the beginning, thank you. And to those who raised concerns or asked us to think differently, thank you as well. Your voices mattered.”

The school will be a place of innovation, he added, strengthening opportunities across our schools and creating clear pathways to college, careers and service through hands-on experiences, new technologies and community and industry partnerships.

Superintendent Heather Tow-Yick said, “Every student deserves a place where they are seen, where they are challenged, where they are inspired; a place where curiosity is encouraged, not limited.”

“Today, this moment belongs to our students, because this is where it begins. So, we invite you to lead us forward, to take your shovel, be the first to dig and help us begin building something that will serve generations to come,” Tow-Yick said. “Thank you all for being here and thank you for believing in our students.”

For regular updates about the project, including impacts to traffic and adjacent neighborhoods, visit the project page on our website and click on the "Community Impacts" tab.

At top, members of the School Board and students use ceremonial shovels to turn over the dirt, marking the official start of construction at the New High School. Immediately above and below, students shared a spoken word poem during the ceremony.

 

Above, School Board Member Natalie Anderson had the opportunity to tour the site at an alternate time due to a prior commitment with her family and school.

 

Here is the full spoken word poem,

"What We Build, Builds Us"

I want to tell you something about this dirt.

Not the ceremony of it. Not the golden shovels.

The dirt itself.

Because before this ground held a dream, it held a people.

The Snoqualmie — sdukʷalbixʷ — the People of the Moon.

Not named for sunlight. Not named for certainty.

Named for the light that shows up in the dark. It disappears and keeps coming back.

They have been here since time immemorial — and I used to hear that phrase and let it pass through me like it was just a ceremony of words.

But immemorial means: before memory. Before written record. Before anyone thought to count.

This land was home before it had an owner. Before it had a price. Before anyone called it a plateau.

The creek they called sqawx̌ (skowch) didn't ask permission to exist. It carved this valley the same way it still does - by returning. Every single time.

And this school?

Ten years of community support. Ten years of challenges. Ten years of returning to this field, and choosing, again and again, to believe.

Like the moon. Like the creek. Like the people who named them both.

Before us, women came to this hill to learn inside Providence Heights College — their voices rising from this same soil, reaching for the same sky.

Layer after layer, this land has held those who dared to learn.

We are not the beginning.

We are the next breath of a story that refuses to end.

 

Today, we break ground on something that isn't finished yet.

And I don't mean the construction.

I mean the idea.

This school is not complete when it opens. Because the students who walk through its doors are not finished yet.

That is not a flaw. That is the design.

There is always more to build. There is always more to become.

Here is the question no textbook will ask you — the one that shows up for every student at some point:

Can I do this?

Will I be ready? Will I have what I need? Will I be able to succeed?

There is no single answer to that question.

No simple guarantee. No one-size-fits-all path.

But there is something this school is built to do:

Help you learn how to learn. Help you learn how to think. Help you build the skills to keep going when things get hard.

This school does not promise easy answers. It promises something more lasting:

The ability to keep asking, to keep growing, and to keep becoming ready.

We are the first generation to grow up knowing that a machine can write our essays, answer our questions, and sound almost exactly like us.

Almost.

What it cannot do — what no algorithm can replicate — is wonder.

Wonder why it matters. Wonder who it leaves out. Wonder what the right question even is.

This school will teach us the difference between information and wisdom.

In a world drowning in the first, that is everything.

I want to talk about walking into a room and not seeing yourself.

The way your voice gets quieter before anyone tells it to.

The way you learn to shrink in spaces not built for you.

This school — every seat, every hallway, every corner of it — is being built for students who have spent too long making themselves smaller.

 

Here, you are not a guest. You are not tolerated. You are the whole point.

Every language. Every story. Every dream still hiding behind someone's quiet.

You belong here completely.

Do you know what this school really is?

It is a love letter written by people to children they will never meet.

The voters who showed up. The families who kept asking. The teachers who believed in classrooms that didn't exist yet. The neighbors who said yes for kids who weren't theirs - not by blood, not by name - but by something older than both: community.

The invisible architecture beneath every wall we build.

You cannot pour that in concrete. You cannot see it in a blueprint.

But it is here. It has always been here.

And because of it, so are we.

Right now — somewhere in this district — a child is eating lunch who doesn't know this field exists.

She's seven, maybe eight. She has no idea that on a Friday in April, people stood in the dirt and broke ground for her.

She doesn't know her name will someday echo in these hallways. She doesn't know the dream has already been dreaming of her.

That is the most quietly powerful thing about legacy: it works without witnesses.

We build for the child who cannot thank us yet.

We build anyway.

I have to be honest with you.

I don't know what this school becomes.

None of us do.

We don't know what the world will ask of the students who walk through these doors in 2027. We don't know what jobs will exist. What problems will need solving. What skills will matter by the time they graduate.

In 2016, when this community first voted to begin this journey, they were making a long-term promise. They could not know every change that would come. None of us could.

 

And still, they said yes.

That is not naïveté or uncertainty. That is commitment.

That is the bravest kind of love and deepest kind of belief - to invest in a future that will continue to unfold long after the moment of decision has passed.

The students who open this school were in second grade when this ground was first promised to them.

They didn't ask for it. They were seven years old. They were learning to read.

And someone — all of you — looked at them and decided: They deserve more room to grow.

I won't be here when this school opens.

And I have never been more at peace with my own irrelevance.

Because that is what it means to build something real — to care so completely about what comes after you that you stop counting what you get in return.

The creek will keep carving. The moon will keep returning. The People of the Moon will keep teaching us what it means to belong to a place so completely that you never stop coming back to it.

And this school — this patient, hard-won, long-awaited beginning — will do what all great schools do:

It will outlast us.

It will hold voices we haven't heard yet.

It will ask questions we don't know to ask.

It will build people who will build things we cannot imagine.

So today, we lift our shovels in celebration.

Not because we know what comes next.

But because we trust the ones who will.

What we build, builds us. What we begin today belongs to them.

And that is enough. That has always been enough.

 

Issaquah School District students and leaders share reflections and hopes for the future during the New High School groundbreaking on April 24, 2026.