Joplin High ready for 1st day

Educators mark end of rebuilding efforts after ’11 twister

NWA Media/JASON IVESTER --08/21/2014--
John Carter with MVP Painting in Kansas City paints in a stairwell on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014, inside the new Joplin High School in Joplin, Mo. The school was originally scheduled to open with the rest of the school district on Monday, Aug. 25, but was pushed back to Tuesday, Sept. 2.
NWA Media/JASON IVESTER --08/21/2014-- John Carter with MVP Painting in Kansas City paints in a stairwell on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014, inside the new Joplin High School in Joplin, Mo. The school was originally scheduled to open with the rest of the school district on Monday, Aug. 25, but was pushed back to Tuesday, Sept. 2.

JOPLIN, Mo. -- French teacher Chris Young and a few volunteers unpacked boxes and filled bookshelves with French novels, textbooks and Disney children's books written in French inside his classroom in the recently constructed Joplin High School.

Young hadn't seen some of his French books since a violent tornado left the former Joplin High School in ruins a little more than three years ago.

Young remembered that textbooks he collected from students were sitting on tables and were lost after the tornado.

Some children's books he had on a bookshelf were damaged or destroyed.

Much of what was left remained in boxes in his garage during a transitional period where the high school was split between two campuses, he said.

Teachers, like Young, and community volunteers are readying classrooms for the opening of a $121.5 million campus housing both Joplin High School and the Franklin Technology Center, a career education center, built on the site of the former campus.

Moments of sadness mix with a general excitement over the expected opening of the new school, Young said.

"It's kind of surreal we're back here," Young said.

"It makes you remember those you did lose."

One of the nation's most deadly tornadoes tore through Joplin on May 22, 2011.

The violent EF-5 tornado resulted in the deaths of 161 people, including seven students and one educator, and damaged or destroyed 10 school buildings, including the high school.

The tornado hit on a Sunday when school was not in session, though many students and staff members were attending a graduation ceremony at Missouri Southern State University a few miles away.

The tornado rocked the entire school system, Superintendent C.J. Huff said.

The school system worked to take care of its people while recovering and rebuilding physical spaces, he said.

The district opened three new campuses in January, and the opening of the high school campus marks the end of a three-year rebuilding process for Joplin schools.

The new campus was set to open today, the first day of school for all other Joplin schools, but Huff on Thursday announced that the first day for the high school campus would be pushed back to Sept. 2.

Huff said he felt confident that the physical site would have been ready for students today, but the first day of school was pushed back to give staff members more time to prepare their classrooms and to get acquainted with the building, he said.

"There's always another day to have school," Huff said.

"There's on time. There's the right time. I want that first day to be a special day."

Getting ready

The ninth- through 12th-grade campus sits on 66 acres.

The building has three stories and encompasses 487,937 square feet. District officials expect the high school to open with about 2,200 students.

The Franklin Technology Center provides career education classes for Joplin High School and about 300 students from three other nearby high schools.

The district was delayed in obtaining city approval to occupy the main campus, the technology center and the gymnasium, which meant that the move-in process couldn't begin until last week, school officials said.

Some teachers were not able to begin working on their classrooms until midweek.

Work continues on a performing arts center that is expected to open in early 2015.

Young could have stashed boxes in the corner to have his classroom ready Monday, but he said he appreciated having more time to make his classroom more inviting.

"We want to make sure when the kids come into school, they're in awe," Young said. "We want it to feel like home."

The main entrance of the campus opens to a wide concrete staircase.

Larger gaps between stairs on one side are meant to function as seating, a feature that is continued into an outdoor courtyard.

The large indoor and outdoor "learning stairs" are separated by windows.

The second floor features a windowed "sky walk" that serves as a main corridor connecting to long hallways that are distinguished by different colors.

Classrooms along the corridors have large windows that provide natural light during the day.

Student work spaces are triangle-shaped tables that can be pushed together and pulled apart as needed.

Science classrooms are connected to spacious labs that have long rectangular tables in the center, and cabinets and counters along the walls.

Conference rooms, dubbed "think tanks," are located throughout the building.

If teachers have students working on different projects, their classes can spill into open spaces built along the hallways that have tables and chairs, spokesman Kelli Price said.

The half of the campus housing the Franklin Technology Center, which has 17 career programs, provides space for a 66-seat restaurant connected with a large commercial-like kitchen.

Space exists for marketing students to operate a boutique and a coffee shop.

A hospitality training area includes a mock hotel lobby.

The welding lab is an expansive space with welding stations and a garage door for moving large equipment.

"You can't help but be excited," Principal Kerry Sachetta said.

"We wanted to mingle career education and college-preparatory education as much as possible."

Making it shine

Many concepts included in the new building were tested at a temporary 11th- and 12th-grade campus constructed inside Northpark Mall in Joplin.

This will be the fourth year students are issued laptops, Sachetta said.

The building has four tornado safe rooms for students and a fifth tornado safe room for nearby residents, Price said. The spaces double as classrooms.

Kathleen Reiboldt taught English at the ninth- and 10th-grade campus created inside an old school building that at one time was the high school, she said.

She ended up teaching inside a classroom that was her dad's homeroom classroom when he was a high school senior in 1947.

Thursday was her first day in her new classroom, and a stack of boxes sat in one corner.

She found spaces for notebooks that outline units based on novels she has taught and for spiral notebooks and notebook paper she keeps in reserve for students.

She wasn't sure what to do with her decorative bulletin board borders without a bulletin board in her room, but she was confident she would figure out her new classroom, she said.

"This is nice," she said of the new building. "When students come in, I want them to see it spit-shined."

The new campus will put all the high school students back together, a change that Rylee Hartwell, 17, thinks will bring a greater sense of unity and pride to his school, he said.

Hartwell will spend his senior year in the new campus.

He is editor of Spyglass, a quarterly campus publication.

"I live five blocks from here," he said, referring to the campus where the new Joplin High School was rebuilt.

"To see this every day, at night to come by and see a light illuminating the building ... to see this anchor return and see that set back again, I think that is important."

After the tornado, Young remembers going to the home of his brother and sister-in-law.

The couple survived in a basement, but only one wall of their home was left standing.

Their property was close enough to the high school that Young could see the debris surrounding it.

One of the seven students who died was a student of Young's, and talking about the loss still makes Young tear up.

Young continued plans that summer to take students to Europe, but that meant some students had to dig through rubble to find their passports.

One student scheduled to go on the trip was among those considered missing but was found at a hospital and survived.

Young said he thinks the rebuilding process has helped the community. The reopening of a CiCi's Pizza this summer after a three-year absence generated lots of excitement, he said.

A similar buzz is occurring with the anticipation of Joplin High School opening.

"We're all excited," he said. "It's cool seeing these places come back."

NW News on 08/25/2014

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