A tour of Getchell High | Schools

The brand-new Marysville Getchell High School will welcome almost 1600 students on Tuesday - with all the latest bells and whistles.

Capital Projects Director John Bingham took me on a tour of the school Friday.

Getchell has five main buildings, including four specialized small learning communities and a shared building that houses the gym and cafeteria.

The four learning communities are the Academy of Construction and Engineering, Bio-Med Academy, International School of Communications, and School for the Entrepreneur. Each has about 400 students enrolled.

Bingham told me students in the Marysville School District are asked to choose an area of interest as an incoming freshman, and the hope is they stay in that learning community through their senior year. At Getchell, students will mostly have classes in the building assigned to their learning community.

All four of the communities were previously at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. Pilchuck was pushing 3,000 students before the 2006 bond got the ball rolling on building this new school.

Bingham told me Getchell was built a year ahead of schedule - and amazingly - under budget. Each of the four main buildings have their own classrooms, science labs, and commons area:

The school of communications boasts it's very own TV station. Bingham told me the students will be able to broadcast not only to their school, but to every school within the Marysville School District, and also to the public access channel.

Take a look at the station - in progress. And don't we recognize that cardboard cut-out?

The architecture of each school allows for an open-air feel. Check out the view students will get from every building:

Crews were painting the work-out area today, so I wasn't able to get a good shot of the indoor track that wraps around the building. But I did get a nice view of the football field.

Bingham told me all football players will continue to play at Marysville-Pilchuck until Getchell can get its own team built up. Although it's a brand-new school, their mascot - the Chargers - has an old history. Bingham told me the Chargers used to be the mascot of Pilchuck High School, before it combined with Marysville High School many years ago. Now that there's a new big school in town, the Chargers mascot is being resurrected.

From the LED-powered lights that actually warm-up the metal hand rails, to the hooks on the side of desks for students to hang their backpacks - it seems like they thought of everything when planning Getchell.

Say a little wish for good weather this weekend, so crews can scramble to finish up all the last minute details for this long-awaited school.