Sitting on not-so-elegant highway 15 in the not-so-beautiful city of Fairmont, Minnesota, on first glance you may believe that the building is a prison. It is really the high school, though. The reason it looks like a prison is because the former high school burned down. The intelligent people in Fairmont knew that oxygen is required for fire. To make sure that a school would never burn down again, they put 2 and 2 together and created a school design lacking windows. No classrooms have windows and the only sun you'll likely see is during lunch. There are windows in the stairwells, but they are small as if to prevent escape. Feeding the no escape feeling is how the building is placed in a dip in the landscape, making you cross a large field and up an embankment if you'd like to walk to the highway.
Another great example of government overreaction.

Although it was originally a true high school (with grades 10-12), the shrinking school-age population and budget cuts have meant the inclusion of first grades 8 & 9 and most recently grades 6 & 7 into the building. There is a fairly big attempt to keep the wildly differing ages separated, but you still can't help but feeling a little uneasy by the fact that there are seniors planning tonight's keggar walking right next to 6th graders planning a sleepover.

Also home to the math high and the events of I'm sorry, but we can't watch the rest of MacBeth until it is censored.