A high school that has anchored the Edgewood, Kentucky community since 1955 is about to get a hard look at its future. Kenton County Public Schools is searching for an architect and engineer to assess Dixie Heights High School and recommend whether to renovate the 71-year-old building, expand it, or replace it entirely.

The district posted an request for architectural and engineering services earlier this month, a step that signals the project has already been identified in the district's facilities plan and that funding is being lined up. The firm selected won't just draw blueprints. It will assess the building's condition, develop design options with cost estimates, and guide the district through Kentucky's state approval process, meaning the choice of architect shapes the entire trajectory of the project.

Dixie Heights serves roughly half the district's secondary students, alongside Simon Kenton High School. Like many mid-century school buildings across the country, the Edgewood campus faces the accumulated problems of age: HVAC systems past their useful life, electrical capacity that predates modern technology demands, potential ADA compliance gaps, and classroom layouts designed for instructional models from decades ago.

Kenton County sits in northern Kentucky's fast-growing Ohio River corridor, just south of Cincinnati, and the district has seen gradual enrollment growth as the region expands. That growth adds urgency to the facilities question: a building designed for a different era and a smaller student population is harder to retrofit for contemporary needs.

Any major construction project will require navigating Kentucky's School Facilities Construction Commission process, which allocates state matching funds to districts based on need and local tax effort. A project of this scale would likely also require local board approval and potentially a bond referendum put to voters.

Kentucky law requires that districts select architects through a qualifications-based process rather than lowest bid, so the district will evaluate firms on experience and technical capacity. Once a firm is on board, the real decision begins: whether Kenton County patches and upgrades a building with seven decades of history, or builds something new for the next generation of students.