by Anne Gibson
Planning committee members for Vail School District’s Mica Mountain High School have been working for over a year and will continue working throughout 2019 and into 2020. The school will be built in two phases. The first phase for 1,000 students will open in July of 2020. The second phase when completed will increase the student population to over 2,000.
The name selected by a community vote was Mica Mountain High School. Mica Mountain is an 8,668-foot peak in the Rincon Mountain District of Saguaro National Park and is the highest point in the park and the Rincon Mountains.
On May 7th, 2019, the Vail School District Governing Board approved the contract of Nemer Hassey to serve as planning principal and awarded him the distinction of serving as Mica Mountain’s first principal. “Nemer Hassey was one of the first people we hired to help open Cienega High School in 2001. We knew we were getting an outstanding football coach. We didn’t realize we were also getting a superb math teacher who would help us successfully transform high school math instruction in Vail. Under Nemer’s leadership, Cienega has become one of the very best large high schools in Arizona. The school’s academic, athletic, and activity programs are simply superb. It is the most requested high school in Vail,” said Vail School Superintendent Calvin Baker. “Nemer Hassey has been deeply involved in the planning for Mica Mountain from the very beginning. He was a very active member of the citizen’s planning committee for the school. We are confident Mr. Hassey’s leadership will ensure that Mica Mountain will match the high standard for excellence that exists at all our high schools in Vail,” Baker continued.
Hassey was named principal of Cienega High School is 2014 after serving as a math teacher and math instructional team leader, athletic director, head football coach and track coach. He then became the assistant principal and continued as the head football coach while leading the entire athletic department. In 2014, Hassey moved into the principal position.
Kim Middleton, who has served as assistant principal of Cienega High for the past four years, will take Hassey’s position as principal at Cienega High School. She joined the Cienega staff as a senior English teacher in October 2012.
A major hurdle was overcome on May 22nd when $6.5 million was the successful bid at the Arizona State Land Auction for the 80-acre parcel on which Mica Mountain will be built. The Arizona School Facilities Board (ASFB) paid for the cost of the land, explained Vail School District Director of Facilities, Maintenance, and Grounds, Jerry Wood. We currently have $22 million from the ASFB for construction, as well as $6.5 million ASFB paid for the land, $35 million allocated to Mica Mountain from a 1917 bond election, and $2.5 million from the bond for the Vail Inclusive Pre School project at Mica Mountain. This will complete Phase I, he said.
According to Wood, the construction, which is planned to begin mid-summer, is a Construction Management-At-Risk delivery method between Concord and Core Construction Companies. The 80-acre site is located about one-half mile east of the intersection of Houghton and Valencia across the street from the model airplane airport. Student, staff, and visitor parking are designed to be egresses and ingresses to Valencia. A community vote selected The Thunder Bolt as the mascot for the school and Carolina blue, black and silver as the school colors.
