Gardendale High School is now official.

On Wednesday, Dr. Anna Vacca cut the ribbon on the new school during a ceremony attended by dozens of officials and community members.

Also present were students who make up the GHS Class of 2010. Vacca dedicated the ceremony to those students, saying they have endured almost three years of disrupted classes and construction as crews built the new state-of-the-art facility.

The school opened on Feb. 16.

While Wednesday’s event was an invitation-only affair, the public is invited to tour the school during an open house Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon, and Sunday, 1-4 p.m.

“This is a new building but it’s a building that contains a lot of heritage,” said Vacca. In designing the school, representatives with Davis Architects held numerous meetings with the public in order to gather input about how the school should look.

GHS teachers and others also formed a group to work closely with the architects in order to ensure key elements of the school’s history were retained.

Parents and other volunteers recently polished old trophies and carefully arranged them in the school’s hallways, according to assistant principal Juanita Vann.

Vacca said the school meets all of the students’, faculty and other employees’ needs.

“It’s a building that’s practical and where learning happens,” she said.

Jefferson County Board of Education superintendent Dr. Phil Hammonds agreed that what takes place inside the new school is more important than how it looks.

“This is not a monument,” he said of the building. “What is more important is what happens here.” He lauded GHS for high AP scores and other academic achievements.

“This is a red-letter day for this community,” he said, adding that Gardendale has much to celebrate but will continue to keep “an eye toward the future.”

Jefferson County Board of Education member Karen Smith Nix has close ties with the school. She lives in Gardendale and has one child who has graduated from the school and another who is a freshman there.

Nix said the new school will continue to “reflect the high quality of education” that GHS students receive.

Vacca stressed the fact that the new school was a community effort.

She said other schools and the community as a whole has helped, in part by providing athletic fields and courts for GHS students to use during construction of the school

She also said Gardendale First Baptist Church has been invaluable for allowing workers and now students to use its parking lot across the street from the school.

Also contributing were countless taxpayers who helped fund the school.

Gardendale High School is one of six high schools being built in Jefferson County, funded by a 1-cent tax collected in 2005. Jefferson County’s portion of the tax was $386 million.

Two more schools in north Jefferson County are also being rebuilt with tax funds. Corner High School is scheduled to open this summer and Mortimer Jordan High School is tentatively slated for a December 2010 opening.