Officials from the Governor Pat Quinn administration joined state and local officials to break ground on a new high school for Mount Vernon Township High School District 201. A total of $48 million of the funding comes from Governor Quinn’s Illinois Jobs Now! capital construction program for a project totaling $72.8 million.  The new high school, the second largest single school building construction project in the state of Illinois, will be approximately 315,000 square feet and sit on an 82 acre campus.  It will house up to 1,800 students and replaces the current 109-year-old campus.  The school will also contain a new 50,000-square-foot Area Career Education Center, the first new high school career center constructed in Illinois in more than 20 years.  It will also feature a football complex and theater, items that were not going to be included, as the project was well over budget, but through re-bidding, those items are now included.  The state of Illinois is providing $48.1 million for the building’s construction, with the school district contributing $24.7 million.  The project is expected to create more than 200 construction jobs for the southern Illinois region.  The new campus is scheduled to open in the fall of 2016.