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Skanska crews this month are kicking off construction of a $51.6 million middle school in Beaverton.

The Beaverton School District hosted a ceremony to break ground Tuesday at the 16.3-acre site in the Timberland area off of Northwest 118th Avenue and Stone Mountain Lane.

The 163,000-square-foot building, designed by Mahlum Architects, is scheduled to be complete by September 2016, but not serve as Beaverton’s ninth middle school until 2020. The building will first temporarily house the Vose, William Walker, and Hazeldale elementary schools and the Arts & Communication Magnet Academy for sixth through 12th grades. Students and staff from the four schools will each spend a year in the new building while their existing ones are demolished and rebuilt.

Mahlum Architects staffers designed the new school, which eventually will serve 1,100 students in sixth through eighth grades, on an accelerated nine-month schedule; construction is scheduled to take place in 12 months instead of the 18 typical for a building that size. The new school was also designed to be flexible enough to serve elementary students for three years.

Money for the project is coming from a $680 million bond that voters approved a year ago. The bond will pay for 27 school projects over the next eight years.