Natural light filters through the four-story glass and steel building. There are state-of-the-art science labs, a computer center, and a rooftop garden for botany lessons. Even the boiler room can double as a real-world teaching lab for physics.
The $73 million Dearborn 6-12 STEM/Early College Academy — the first newly constructed school for the Boston system in 15 years — is a far cry from the century-old building it replaced in the heart of Roxbury, where young Irish immigrants once learned how to sew, iron clothes, make beds, and clean bathtubs as future maids for the wealthy in the Back Bay and Beacon Hill.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who will hold a ribbon-cutting Thursday afternoon, hopes the school will serve as an inspiring symbol of his pledge to spend $1 billion over 10 years to overhaul the city’s school buildings, roughly half of which were erected before World War II.