NORTH BERWICK – When high school students in this York County town start school in the fall, they will be attending the most expensive high school in the state, complete with its own restaurant and fitness center.

The new $34 million Noble High School boasts two gymnasiums, an auditorium that seats 1,000, 11 ball fields and an eight-lane track, all on 200 acres deep in the woods.

Most unusual about the school is a goal by officials to make aspects of it, such as the restaurant and health center, open to the public.

In designing Noble High, officials said they were sensitive to the need for the public – even those without children – to use the school.

For instance, the school for 1,500 pupils contains a little restaurant that culinary-arts students will use in their two-year program. Plans call for the restaurant to be open to the public for lunches and catered affairs.

And the school’s health clinic was designed so that members of the public can use it if they need to see a nurse.

Another part of the school to be available to the public is its fitness center.

The new school is very different from the old high school on Cranberry Meadow Road. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges, citing inadequate science labs, art rooms and music rooms at that school, had threatened four years ago to put the school on probation if a plan wasn’t approved for a new facility.

The approval for building a new high school for SAD 60, which includes Berwick, North Berwick and Lebanon, came during a district referendum in December 1997.

The funding for the school is from the state, with the exception of $1 million that the district will pay over the next two years.