Minneapolis Public Schools district and school board leaders along with Mayor Jacob Frey attended a ground breaking ceremony for a new career and technical education center at North High School on Friday. (Alex Kormann, Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Come next fall, North High School will be home to a career and technical education center for students from across the Minneapolis Public Schools district.

But Friday, the $88 million renovation project attracted city and district leaders, including Mayor Jacob Frey and Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox, who wielded gold shovels at the official groundbreaking.

"This will be groundbreaking in so many ways," Cox said, adding that the center will be a "premier" opportunity in the metro area.

The program will give the city's students a chance to gain hands-on experiences and earn post-secondary credits and industry certifications related to engineering, robotics, drones, computer science and media arts.

"What I think this project signals is that we are betting on ourselves," Frey said. "We're betting on the students in the Minneapolis Public Schools system" and their futures as business leaders and entrepreneurs in the city.

"There's no more important message we can send to students in our system right now," he said.

The project will also bring some much-needed improvements to North High School itself.

Next year's Polars will enter the school through a new, brightly lit entrance that opens on to a newly configured plaza and head to classrooms that also have bigger, brighter windows. The school's common space will be updated, as will the kitchen and dining areas. The studio for KBEM-FM, the district's radio station, will also get a remodel and new equipment.

Other changes include a new storm shelter and improvements to the ventilation system and the parking areas around the school building, which is about 50 years old.

"This is not a symbolic renovation — this is a deep, structural redo," said Steve White, North High's assistant principal.

About one-third of the building is already "off-line" to allow for the construction work, White said.

"Everybody is really excited to see it done," he said.

Current seniors are already expressing disappointment that they will have graduated by the time the improvements are completed, but there's still an air of enthusiasm, White said.

"Everybody has a little brother or sister or friend that they know will get to enjoy [the improvements]," he said. "It really is going to be beautiful."

Minutes after Cox thanked North Side families and community members for their involvement in the planning phases of the project, School Board Member Sharon El-Amin emphasized that she wants to see continued involvement and hopes the North High community directly benefits from the new career and technical center.

"We have to make sure our families are a part of this process," she said. "It's what our families have been fighting for. ... [The center] gives our children an opportunity to explore more careers. I'm going to push our community to really be a part of this."