Metea Valley High School

Metea Valley High School will be a high school in Aurora, Illinois, to be located at Eola Road and Molitor Road in DuPage County. The school will be the counterpart to Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora and Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville. The school will also join the Upstate Eight Conference for the 2010-2011 school year. It is supposed to be one of the largest high schools ever built in the United States of America.

Preparations

Serving Indian Prairie School District 204, and due to open for the 2009-2010 academic year for freshman and sophomore classes (grades nine and ten), Metea Valley will be a $124.7 million, 3,000-student school. The school is expected to meet its full enrollment of students for grades 9-12 during the 2011-2012 academic year. The school will also begin its first Prairie State Achievement Exams (which will be used as a standardized testing measure of academic achievement) during the 2010-2011 academic year, and per Illinois High School Association Policy, the school will not be fully recognized for interscholastic sports until that same academic year.

The school's namesake, a chief of the Potawatomi tribe, was selected during 2006. The school's colors will be black and gold (maintaining a tradition of ' and gold' in all three high schools) and the school's mascot will be the 'Mustangs'. The colors were announced in February 2007, and the mascot selection in March 2007. Both were chosen by those middle school students who will be attending the school beginning in 2009.

District controversies

The school's parent district faced criticism centered on estimates of future enrollment numbers, which were used by supporters of the referendum to build Metea Valley. The court process, and attempts at receiving special powers from the state legislature for acquiring the remaining land required for the construction, has also been criticized in local letters to the editor.

The district remains in condemnation proceedings in an effort to obtain a portion of the Brach-Brodie property that will be the foundation for the school and is seeking to gain the remaining land with a definitive court hearing scheduled for September 2007, or 'Quick Take' powers if granted by the Illinois General Assembly.

As of January 17, 2008 the district has decided to build the school on property off of North Eola Road and the Illinois Prairie Path. The land is property of St Johns African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Construction

One of the companies doing this job is Commercial Mechinical Inc. (CMI) from Dunlap, Illinois. The project manager is Chicago-based DLR Group.

Construction began in the spring of 2008. It began with an extensive earth moving operation. For months, as the landscape changed, there was no discernable structure, although one could see the flattened "footprint" where the building would be located and massive sewer pipes and basins dotting the land. Then, early in August 2008, steel structural beams started to rise up near the southwest corner of the property (just north of the Cambridge Chase subdivision near Eola Rd.).

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