Standing on a mostly empty patch of land in north Fort Worth, Jaskirat Singh gripped a shovel and eagerly anticipated what was to come on top of the land he readied to break into.
Singh dug that symbolic hole in 2025. Two years later, he left something real behind — his name forever inscribed on a building where he’ll soon be attending classes.
Singh and other middle school students signed a steel beam that will be lifted hundreds of feet in the air, eventually becoming part of Northwest ISD’s Davis High School. The campus is scheduled to open in August 2027. Students also helped unveil the identity of the mascot they chose for the still-under-construction campus: the Davis Diamondbacks.
Singh reflects on the two-year-old memory with pride because he helped Northwest ISD break ground on the district’s fourth high school.
Returning Sept. 25, the now eighth grader found the dirt he dug into now supports a towering building and the bones of a campus large enough to hold thousands of students.
“I was just purely amazed at how big the high school was,” Singh said. “You can see it from the highway.”
Seeing the mascot — a maroon and gray-scaled snake ready to bite, fangs showing, slithering around the “D” standing for Davis High — made the school feel a little more real, seventh grader Emily Mauk said.
“I was excited,” Mauk said. “I was a little nervous of what it would be, but I was excited towards the end because I know it’s going to represent all of us.”
A steel beam signed by future Davis High School students, staff and community members sits in front of the campus construction site Sept. 25 in Fort Worth. The beam, featuring the newly unveiled Diamondbacks logo, will become part of the school when it opens in August 2027. (Matthew Sgroi | Fort Worth Report)
The vote came down to two finalists: the Diamondbacks and the Aviators. More than 1,000 students from Tidwell and Worthington middle schools took part, and Diamondbacks received 83.5% of the vote, according to Northwest ISD.
Singh has started to envision what life on campus might look like.
“I can picture myself sitting in the stands, cheering on our football team,” he said.
Located off North Riverside Drive near Interstate 35W and State Highway 170, Davis High School will open with freshmen and sophomores before adding a grade level each year. The campus will have space for 3,200 students.
Part of Northwest ISD’s $2 billion 2023 bond, the school represents roughly one-quarter of the overall package, Superintendent Mark Foust said.
The building is expected to be enclosed by the start of 2027, and construction crews will then turn their attention to its interior.
Northwest ISD’s Transportation, Automation & Logistics Academy will be housed on the campus, while the district is seeking federal approval for an Air Force Junior ROTC program.
But on Sept. 25, much of the attention was less on what would go inside the building — the focus was on who would eventually fill it.
Tidwell and Worthington middle school students helped generate ideas for the mascot — some a little less conventional — before the district narrowed the choices to two, future Davis principal Ron Myers said.
“Dominators. Dandelions. Dogs, a few ducks,” Myers enumerated the also-rans for the crowd gathered on the asphalt of the school’s parking lot for the reveal.
The eventual choice reflected both the land surrounding the school and the students who are bound to establish its identity, Myers said.
“This choice is more than a symbol,” Myers said. “It represents the voice of our future students and the identity they want to build together as one.”
It stood out to Singh and Mauk, too, that students will soon get to build something from scratch.
While most teenagers enter a high school where traditions are already established, Davis students will have to decide what theirs are, and the campus’s first classes will determine what the school becomes known for.
Eventually, Singh wants that reputation to stretch beyond athletics.
“I would like for them to think Davis High School is such a good school,” he said. “Everyone that goes there, they always excel.”
The school is named for longtime Northwest ISD trustee and dairy farmer J. Fred Davis Jr., who helped shape the district during an era when much of the surrounding area looked very different than it does today.
Davis moved to the area in 1962, his daughter Anne Davis Simpson said. I-35W and State Highway 170 had not yet carved through the landscape.
Davis served 12 years on the school board and helped plan the district’s central complex on land alongside State Highway 114, according to Northwest ISD.
“For Dad, education was a way for everyone to prosper,” Simpson said. “He would often remind us, you can make and lose a lot of money, particularly in the dairy business, but your education will always be with you.”
His name now sits on a campus being built for a much different Northwest ISD, currently shaped by booming enrollment growth and new development across northern Fort Worth and surrounding communities in Tarrant, Denton and Wise counties.
Students who stood outside the unfinished school Friday realized the history may become personal to themselves, too.
Singh was there for the groundbreaking. He was also there to sign the beam that will become part of the building. Years from now, he may walk the halls and remember exactly where his name sits inside, he said.
“It’s like a memory forever,” Singh said.
Mauk felt much the same way.
Students will be able to remember that they were there before the hallways were finished. Before the first football game. Before anyone had graduated as a Davis Diamondback.
They were there, she said, when it was still being built.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
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