BATON ROUGE – Istrouma High School is expected to be open next school year following a renovation that begins Tuesday, the school system said in an email late Tuesday afternoon about the next day's groundbreaking.

Wednesday, the East Baton Rouge Parish School System is set to start work on the school, which has been closed for about three years. The state took control of the campus because of poor performance and shut it down. In 2015, the state-run Recovery School District returned to the campus to the parish school system's control.

The EBR school system plans to spend about $21 million on renovations. People who live and work around the school along with school district officials like Superintendent Warren Drake argue opening the school will help revitalize a struggling area of the city.

"We have no high school in 70805. We need a high school there. It's something we need to do. It's something the board has worked on for many years to do this," Drake said previously. 

Though, the cost to open the school doubled – originally estimated at $10 million.

Istrouma High first opened in 1917 and moved to its current location off Winbourne in 1950.

“Istrouma will celebrate 100 years when it reopens in the Fall of 2017 with a wide range of college preparatory and workforce development programs for students,” the school system wrote in a news release about Wednesday's groundbreaking.

The school is expected to be able to accommodate 1,200 students.

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