Helena High School campus breaks ground, marking construction start
The first shovels hit Helena High’s campus as a $240 million bond moves from promise to dirt, with students targeted to return by fall 2028.
Helena voters can now see where their money is going. The first visible work has begun at Helena High School, where Tuesday’s groundbreaking turned the district’s long-planned rebuild from a bond promise into an active construction site at 1300 Billings Avenue. For families, staff and alumni, the shift matters because it marks the point where the campus will start changing in ways that affect daily access, traffic and the school’s future.
The project is backed by the $240 million Helena High School bond approved Sept. 9, 2025, when voters narrowly passed the measure by 11,151 to 10,793, or 50.82% to 49.18%. That ballot issue authorized demolition and reconstruction of Helena High School and improvements to Capital High School, making the new campus one of the largest public investments in Helena Public Schools’ history.
District leaders said in February that the reimagined Helena High campus would break ground in summer 2026 and open to students by fall 2028. The Helena High portion of the work is estimated at about $147.1 million. Plans call for a three-story building that keeps the existing gymnasium in place, while also folding in the Project for Alternative Learning, district athletics and a district kitchen.
The school district has said it will add a livestream camera to its website once construction starts, giving residents a way to watch the campus change in real time. Superintendent Rex Weltz has described the effort as one community project rather than three separate ones, and architect Tim Meldrum of A&E + SMA Design has said the community has served as the design team.
The rebuild comes after district officials outlined serious problems in the current building, including a failing boiler, a sinking foundation, failing electrical systems and bug infestations. Leaders have argued that waiting longer would only drive up costs in a construction market already shaped by inflation, a risk that makes the timing of the work as important as the design itself.
The immediate test now is execution: keeping the campus usable while crews move equipment, stages materials and reshape one of the city’s busiest school grounds. If the schedule holds, Helena will get a newly built high school by the 2028-29 school year; if it slips, the city faces higher costs, more disruption and a longer wait for the school voters approved.
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