Bonneville Joint School District 93's newest high school is ready.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 5 p.m. Wednesday, giving the public a chance to check out Thunder Ridge High School before classes start next week.

The school is expected to have around 1,370 students, drawn from the eastern portion of the school district, when classes for all grades start Tuesday, said Principal Doug McLaren. (The freshmen get the new school to themselves Monday.)

It will be District 93's largest high school. The school has 69 teachers, McLaren said, of whom 29 are starting in the district this year. About 20 came from Hillcrest High School and 20 from Bonneville High School.

Construction of the 257,000-square foot school cost about $56 million, and the whole project cost $63.5 million when you add furniture and site improvements, said district Maintenance and Operations Director John Pymm. Groundbreaking was June 2016 and the district got the certificate of occupancy for the building earlier this month.

Thunder Ridge's design incorporates innovations that might be new to someone who hasn't been inside a high school for a while. For example, most of the classrooms are designed so students will be sitting in small groups rather than in rows, and teachers can move the desks into different configurations and create different-sized groups. Classrooms also have stools and plastic chairs that are more flexible and adjust a bit to accommodate the person sitting in them, as well as the more traditional and unyielding plastic chairs. Physical education classes have been moving more toward emphasizing fitness and life skills and away from the team sports adults may remember from their high school days, and the area where PE classes will be taught is designed to reflect this.

The school also includes seating and areas for students to gather in common spaces such as staircases and hallways, a feature common in newer schools. You can see the developments in school design even in small details such as the water bottle filling stations incorporated into the water fountains.

"Kids seem to love it," McLaren said.

The school also will have a branch of Idaho Central Credit Union that will employ interested students.

All of the district's "medically fragile" high school students will also attend Thunder Ridge.

Chemistry teacher Dennis Hummer, who is starting in the district after having retired from teaching at a high school in Salt Lake City, showed off the amount of storage space he has and the new equipment, including analytical scales that can weigh to the tenth of a milligram.

"I really was worried about the situation I'd be in here, but I feel like I'm a first-year teacher," he said. "This is exciting."

After three failed previous attempts, District 93 voters approved the bond to build Thunder Ridge in November 2015.

The planned new middle school, which voters approved earlier this year, will be built in a field next to Thunder Ridge. McLaren said the two schools may share a bus loop.