The spacious northeast Bend warehouse that will soon become home to two experimental high schools appears only half-finished. The space is filled with no-frills plywood walls, creating a few skeleton “rooms” with no ceilings, looking more like a construction site than a high school expected to house students in a month.

But after construction debris is cleared and furniture is added, the bare-bones look will remain come September.

“This is 90 percent of what it’s going to look like when students walk in,” said Roger White, principal of Realms High School. “Just shift your mindset.”

Realms and Skyline High School will open in September. They’re choice-option schools, meaning students from anywhere in the district can enroll and will receive a nontraditional learning experience that meets district and state standards. Each school will start with 100 students, all in ninth and 10th grade.

Realms High

Realms is an extension of the Realms Middle School, where White was principal since its inception in 2001. According to White, 50, his school will focus on interdisciplinary curriculum, which means students will learn about topics using multiple subjects, instead of dividing them up into separate classes.

“In the real world, it’s pretty rare that we’re given a task in our job that only involves English, or only involves science,” he said. “We have to be able to pull skills and abilities from all different disciplines.”

Each grade will go through a “learning expedition” in which students will focus on one topic for six weeks to a semester. The units will incorporate many school subjects, although each expedition will lean more on some than others. For example, the first expedition for ninth-graders will focus on wildfires, and students will collaborate with state agencies, fire experts and local organizations to learn about the topic. While that expedition is science-heavy, Realms 10th-graders will start their year with an expedition focused on marginalized groups, which will primarily use social studies skills.

“Learning expeditions are like trains, and different subjects are like cars on the train,” White said, “Some expeditions are typically stronger in one or two disciplines, and other disciplines might be there to connect and supplement.”

Focusing on hyper-relevant topics is a part of Realms’ goal to have its students become “leaders of change,” White said.

“A lot of our curriculum is shaped around topics that connect to social justice and environmental stewardship,” he said. “We want students to learn to be active in their communities.”

Students will be part of a class called Crew, where groups of 15 to 16 students will learn about leadership and how to improve their character.

Skyline High

While Realms has its students involved in extensive, gradewide expeditions, Skyline High School focuses more on letting students have more autonomy in the classroom, said its principal, Mike Franklin.

Franklin, 45, said a class at Skyline will focus on one theme at a time, but students will focus on a specific aspect of that theme and work on projects as individuals or groups.

“We may all be studying World War II, but each kid will find something they’re interested in from that to become their project,” he said. “One group of kids can do music from that era; another group of kids can be working on airplane technology from that era.”

Skyline’s students will have a challenging task in front of them when school begins: designing and building their own classrooms. Franklin said he purposely left two classrooms unbuilt, so the students could decide for themselves what they want their flexible space to look like using movable walls.

“We believe in the idea of dynamic stability, like when you’re riding a bicycle or in a boat. You’re more stable when you’re moving forward,” he said. “As opposed to a traditional school with solid walls and massive infrastructure, we want — right down to our physical space — the ability to change and adapt.”

Skyline will attempt to connect its students with local industry. Franklin said business representatives will present a real problem they’re facing, and students will present their solutions.

Similar to Realms’ Crew, Skyline will have advisory groups of about 15 students led by a teacher, who will be available for academic and emotional counseling.

“Study after study … shows that if a student has a strong connection to one adult outside their family, that’s the secret to success in an academic environment,” Franklin said.

Developing the location for Realms and Skyline was a quick process: White said the district started looking for a site nine months ago and began building the classrooms in May in the leased warehouse.

According to Hal Beumel, the facilities manager for Realms and Skyline, the cost of construction for both schools was slightly less than $915,000 in total. He said the 30,000 square-foot facility would cost $10 million to 12 million if the district built a brand-new building in a traditional style.

Regardless of savings, White said the schools are more focused on preparing their students for the future rather than the school’s appearance.

“Our goal, and the district’s goal, was to prototype two new schools that went about teaching and learning in different and radical and alternative ways to … get students ready for a workforce that we don’t even know what it’s going to look like in five to 10 years (and) for jobs … which don’t exist yet,” he said.

—Reporter: 541-617-7854;jhogan@bendbulletin.com