Batula Kassim sat in front of a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in her school’s new library, the sunlight a welcome contrast to the refurbished Macy’s department store where she spent her freshman year. 

Kassim, an incoming sophomore at Burlington High School, is one of a cohort of students who spent part or all of their high school years attending classes at the renovated store in downtown Burlington. 

Kassim described the environment at the Macy’s building as “claustrophobic.”

“It was just like, not enough space,” she said. “There was not much you could do in that building.”

The nearly six year saga began when buildings on the school’s former campus in Burlington’s New North End were found to have elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, more commonly known as PCBs. PCBs were used in building materials before the U.S. banned them in 1979, and exposure to them is associated with an array of health risks, including cancer. 

Although the district had planned for high schoolers to return part-time to in-person classes in fall 2020 after a spring of remote learning due to Covid protocols, the PCB contamination prompted the district to return to online classes in September of that year. The school relocated to a speedily renovated former Macy’s building in downtown Burlington in early 2021. 

The district eventually chose to demolish the former campus and build a new school, citing the extensive remediation that would have been needed to make the old buildings safe for students and staff. 

Now Burlington’s new high school building, built on the site of the former campus, is ready to welcome students. 

The project to demolish the old campus and build the new school on the same site cost about $206 million, according to Burlington School District Superintendent Tom Flanagan. That cost was largely footed by Burlington taxpayers, who overwhelmingly approved a $165 million bond to support the project in 2022. The project was also supported by $16 million in state funding and a federal stormwater grant, Flanagan said. The district did not respond prior to publication to a question about the amount of the federal grant, although documents on the district’s website indicated the project received about $1 million in federal funding for the stormwater portion of the project. 

The district has offered tours of the new high school building throughout the summer for students, families, alumni and interested community members. A week before the start of the school year, Kassim joined one, eager to see the new building. 

“I’m really loving it, but I know I’m gonna get lost for the first few weeks of school,” Kassim said as she walked through the new school, joking about its size compared to the Macy’s building. 

“I feel like I can breathe,” she added. 

Students on the tour seemed ready to leave behind the numerous quirks of life in the Macy’s, which included science classrooms without running water, a lack of sound separation between classrooms and a walk to the YMCA for gym class. 

But the biggest throughline for students was the light. While the former Macy’s lacked windows, the new building is full of natural light and windows that overlook the school’s athletic fields and the neighboring woods. 

Flanagan, the superintendent, said he was especially excited about the physical accessibility that is woven into the school’s new design. That includes wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, showers and a balcony that looks down onto the school’s new gymnasium. 

Hannah Harris, president of the incoming senior class, was excited about the gym for another reason. 

“Being the class president, I run, like, pep rallies and stuff like that, and so we actually have a gym for every person in the school to come together,” she said. “We didn’t have that at Macy’s.”

Harris said the few pep rallies at the Macy’s building had been held on the roof of the nearby parking garage. 

“The music wasn’t connecting. It was really, really hard to get everyone up there and together,” she said. “So I think I’m really most excited for that.”

PCB worries persist  

While the Macy’s chapter is finally closed, the specter of possible PCB contamination still hangs over schools across the state. 

In 2021, the state Legislature mandated PCB testing for the more than 300 Vermont schools built or renovated before 1980, but the program has suffered from a lack of adequate funding. 

As of January 2026, 171 of the schools covered by the mandate hadn’t tested for PCBs. This session, after initially considering ending the testing mandate, the legislature extended the deadline for schools to complete mandated testing from 2027 to 2035.   

The state of Vermont is pursuing a state lawsuit against against Monsanto, which is now owned by pharmaceutical giant Bayer, over the company’s role in manufacturing and selling materials that contained PCBs. A group of nearly 100 Vermont school districts is pursuing a separate federal case against Monsanto. The company has faced lawsuits across the country related to its role in manufacturing PCBs. 

And as the Burlington School District celebrates the start of a new era in a new building, it’s also looking towards its own day in court. The district has an ongoing federal lawsuit against Monsanto, which is expected to go to trial in early 2027. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: After a nearly six year saga, Burlington’s new high school opens its doors.