THE YEAR 2037 2019 New Campus In 2017, ground was broken for the building of a new $108 million state-of-the-art campus. Construction is expected to be completed in 2019 and will preserve the significant architectural building structures of the old campus. Demographics For the 2014–15 school year: African American: 31.1% Hispanic: 36.8% White: 26.1% American Indian: 0.2% Asian: 4.1% Pacific Islander: 0.2% Two or More Races: 1.5% Economically Disadvantaged: 47.7% In the 2016–2017 school year, about 36% of the students were Hispanic, 32% were black, and 24% were white. Circa 2016 about 60% of the students attending Lamar live outside of the Lamar attendance boundary. In 2018 more than 50% of the student body was considered to be at risk of becoming school dropouts. Historical demographics In the Lamar's early history, students were segregated into different schools by race. In 1967 the school had 2,040 students. Until 1970 HISD categorized Hispanic students as being White, so Jay P. Childers, author of The Evolving Citizen: American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagement, wrote that in terms of ethnic ratios, "Exact numbers for the late 1960s are impossible to calculate" for that reason. As evidence that non-Hispanic White students were the vast majority at that time, he used images from the school newspaper, The Lancer. Childers wrote that ethnic change "seemed" to have quickly occurred after desegregation, citing the fact that in Spring 1974 African Americans made up six of twelve of the class officers and that in 1972 the cover of one issue of the Lancer showed a black male. Curtis wrote that the racial integration did not cause "unfortunate incidents" at the school. In 1975 there were 1,900 students. Due to the outflow of the very wealthy the school was increasingly made up of middle-class students, and some students were of lower income backgrounds: 100 of them rented their own apartments. As of 1975 about 33% of Lamar's students were black. Many black parents sent their children to Lamar because of the school's strong academic reputation. By 1975 black students became members of clubs and the cheerleader corps of Lamar, and the student council president and "Lady of Lamar" was black. Curtis wrote that black students who did not wish to associate with whites often did not participate in the social environment while whites who did not wish to associate with blacks were still able to participate in