Helena High launches history interviews before old campus is torn down

Helena High is asking former students, retired teachers and past staff to help capture the life of its current campus before it disappears. The new Helena High History Interviews project will run for the next two years, with student groups conducting the interviews and building a record of the traditions, friendships and school culture tied to the existing building on Warren Street.

The effort is meant to turn current students into campus historians. School leaders want memories of pep rallies, hallways, teachers and daily routines preserved while there is still time, especially from people who knew the building across different eras. Helena High says the original high school on the site dates to 1955, giving the project a direct link to a campus that has served generations of Bengals.

The timing matters because the district is already moving toward a replacement. Helena voters approved a $240 million high school bond in 2025 to replace the existing Helena High building, and district leaders said students were expected to start in the new facilities in fall 2028. The broader campus project also includes the Project for Alternative Learning, district athletics and the district kitchen. District materials say Helena High’s steam heating system is 70 years old and in imminent danger of failure, while Helena Public Schools says the average age of its school buildings is nearly 75 years, not counting the three new elementary schools opened in 2019. The district says it also faces about a $100 million deferred maintenance backlog.

The interviews are part of a larger effort to preserve place and memory at the same time the district prepares for change. Helena High’s history page reaches back to 1876, when a small high school was ending another year on Warren Street, where Central School now stands. The school also already keeps an alumni page that can host or link class reunion pages, giving the project a ready-made network of former Bengals and longtime Helena residents to draw from.

Anyone interested in participating can sign up through the school’s official interest form or contact the Helena High main office. District leaders have said the community helped shape the design process for the new campus, and the interviews are another way to carry that involvement forward before the old building comes down and the next chapter begins.