Warren County Report

However, the undercurrent of change also pulls hard at students walking the hallways of 66-year-old Warren County High School. For this is that historic community landmark’s final season as what it has been for six and a half decades, the county’s lone public high school. While details and logistics are still being ironed out in the halls of county government, the building occupying the high ground above Luray Avenue is facing future use as a public school, just on a different level as one of two planned renovated middle schools.

For administrators, teachers and the students these are exciting, busy and even worrisome times. WCJHS Principal Andrew Keller addressed the challenges and anticipation of the coming year at his school. One immediate consequence is the temporary return to a post-Labor Day opening to allow more unimpeded summer construction time at WCJHS.

WCJHS evolves

“I think it’s difficult to get the pulse of eighth and ninth grade kids on many levels, and their only association with change last year was that some of their windows were boarded up. But I think the kids on the whole are probably very excited about the fact they’re going to have brand new everything next year. It’s going to be inconvenient this year but I think everybody’s going to accept that inconvenience as a hurdle toward progress.

“It’s going to be a challenge for us this year because we have about 20 trailers around here, some of which are going to be a pretty good distance from our gym. So, we’re going to really have to play around with the time it takes to get from one class to another and routing people through areas to make sure that they can get there not only on time but without having to wear a hard hat. So that’s going to be tough but I think it’s something we certainly can do successfully. Eighth and ninth grade kids are pretty resilient and they will respond to almost anything, really.” Keller said he saw firsthand evidence of that resiliency as an assistant principal at the school seven years ago.

“When we first opened this building up in 1999, we did not have lockers or a gym the first half of the first semester. And teachers and students both responded to that and we really did not have any problems with it. It was inconvenient but we knew it was coming.

“And to be honest, I’m not too concerned about what we’ll face this year. These trailers are pretty nice, it’s not like we’re putting our students in cattle cars, they are good classroom trailers and they’ll have all the things that would have been in their traditional classrooms this year.”

But beyond the transitional use of trailers to house students, portions of the newly constructed wings and facilities, including classrooms, a gym and refurbished cafeteria, will be open for use as other existing areas are under construction. So, at WCJHS it is much more immediately a year of transition, change and a bit more physical turmoil than is being felt at the high school.

Business as usual?

But at both schools to a great extent it must be  business as usual, WCHS Principal Melinda Calhoun points out.

“As excited as we are about the prospect of new facilities, we’ll be in the middle of a school year at a high school, with all the testing requirements, making sure the kids are ready for graduation. That’s all you really have time to focus on and this is going to be an intense year and we’ll have the same requirements on us as we have for the past six years of making those [state and federal] test scores and making sure our kids are getting what they need to get out into the world and go on to higher education or go on to jobs,” Calhoun said.

“We talk all the time about how we’re going to think we’ve died and gone to heaven to have new facilities,” Calhoun says of her school staff’s anticipation of the 2007-08 school year. “How much of that is in the sight of the students, I’m not real sure because students, at their point in life, are not really projecting themselves into the future as much as we older people tend to do. I think as this year progresses I’ll be able to better answer the question about how the students are viewing the changes that are coming,” Calhoun said in her office in late July.

But for one class at the high school there will be no preparation for change other than that faced annually by high school seniors everywhere – graduation.

“We certainly hope to instill the perspective that it is an honor to be the last high school class to graduate out of this building, as it will be an honor to be the first graduating class out of the new buildings,” Calhoun said of her school’s seniors.

One senior, Melissa Fisher, expressed the mixed emotions many seniors may be experiencing about the coming year. “I would have liked to have been in a nice, new comfortable school but not split up from my friends. I feel good about being part of the Class of 2007 – the upside is we rock and we get that special distinction of being the final class to graduate from the old building, the downside is that the world after graduation seems more uncertain than ever.”

Calhoun noted that her staff has already made some recommendations about making the coming year a special one at the high school.

“A couple of teachers, in fact Ms. Fox initially, have already mentioned to me that this Homecoming needs to be a very special one and we’ve already talked about how we could involve the community in that.”

Calhoun also said she is thankful for the time, effort and liaison work the central office staff has put into preparing for the coming transition. “You couldn’t do those two jobs at once,” Calhoun said of the tasks facing school and school system administrators in such times of change.

“Central office is where they are really planning out the new schools. Initially they asked for a lot of input from us for floor plans and what we’d like to see in the new building and all the staff had input into that. But once it got underway they have been the ones continuing that work.”

WCHS, an end & a beginning

During the debate over one versus two new high schools, many WCHS alumni expressed alarm that their own children might not graduate from a school of the same name as they had. And after the class of 2006-07 that will be the case for some. Half of the county’s public school children will graduate from Skyline High School, just over the ridge beyond Criser Road from the soon-to-be-former Luray Avenue high school.

But Warren County Public Schools Superintendent Pamela McInnis believes what is to come may not be as problematic a change as some have feared.

“Those parents that have been part of this system and are WCHS graduates, I think are very tied to that building. But being one of those people, though I don’t have kids, but when I was there, it was only the main building. The career and tech-ed center wasn’t there, the whole gym and athletic wing and band rooms were not yet in place. So, when you think about it, people adapted pretty well when they added those more modern looking buildings because it improved the facility.

“And I think that’s the same reaction that’s going to happen next year. Kids are very adaptable and I think once they get into the new buildings and see what they have to offer, things will go very well.

“Warren County High School is not going away, that’s what’s important. What WCHS means and is, and not the facility it’s in, but the people and what goes on inside those walls makes the school what it is. So that will all still be there, it just won’t be the same physically,” McInnis says. “Perpetuating that WCHS name, it will have the same traditions as the current WCHS has. And that’s what people need to be tied to, as opposed to a building itself.

New school, new traditions

“And I think for those students who will attend the new school, that can be really exciting too. It’s like being a charter member of an organization. The kids that go to Skyline High School will have the opportunity to start traditions, to put things in place that no one has had the opportunity to do here since 1940, when the current high school building opened. Nobody has actually had an opportunity to create new traditions for a high school here in over 65 years. For the kids that will be in Skyline High School, they’ll be able to say to their children and grandchildren, ‘I was part of making that happen,’ and frankly I think that will be really exciting.”

McInnis noted that some students have expressed distress at the prospect of being separated from longtime classmates and friends in the 2007-08 school year. The administration is contemplating a joint graduation ceremony for Skyline and Warren County High Schools in 2008 to address those concerns to some extent, McInnis said.