Murray students return to school

DALTON — North Murray High School technically opened last year, but its students were housed in the old Gladden Middle School building for the entire year while a permanent facility was under construction.

Today, an estimated 800 juniors, sophomores and freshmen open the new school off Mount Carmel Church Road. North Murray is the first new high school in the Murray County Schools system since 1934.

Work was underway all weekend to get the 280,000-square-foot school opened and operational in time for students to return to school today. The gymnasium will not be complete for several more weeks, officials said, and, while the area in front of the building was still a field of red clay as of the weekend, officials said the classrooms were on track to be open today.

Efforts to reach Principal Maria Bradley were unsuccessful last week, but school system administrative services director Dean Donehoo said the school would definitely be ready for students even though all the details won’t be finished.

“(They’re) probably a week or two off on the gym and probably a little longer on the auditorium,” Donehoo said, adding that the weight room won’t be ready for a few more days either.

The new school year marks the start of some new initiatives as well. North Murray will offer cosmetology and culinary arts classes, marking the first time those classes have been offered at the high school level in Murray County. Murray County High School is introducing a new program of its own. Murray High is one of only five schools in the nation to adopt the C2G (Commitment to Graduate) framework it will use for the next four years. According to the C2G website, it is “an initiative to address the growing student dropout rate across America. It encourages students to strive for their high school diploma and set a goal for the next stage of life.”

“It is a huge honor for us,” Linder said, explaining organizers asked Murray High to participate in its tracking program after seeing the school’s graduation rate increase for several years, landing at 76.7 percent in 2010. In 2007, it was 57.4 percent.

Meanwhile, the school will have its largest senior class ever — at least 430 seniors are expected — but the incoming classes are smaller with the junior class at only 275. The opening of North Murray is beginning to alleviate the overcrowding, she said.

Students will also come into a revamped cafeteria with new kitchen equipment and rearranged serving lines. Linder said new murals and artwork will arrive shortly if it isn’t ready in time for the first day of school. The money comes from the school’s nutrition fund and not from taxpayer dollars in the general budget, she said.

Murray County continues into its second year on a 160-day calendar rather than the traditional 180-day calendar. School officials made the move last year as a cost-saving measure and implemented it again after seeing standardized test scores continue to improve.

Most of the school system’s leadership will stay the same, but some schools will share assistant principals that didn’t have to before, and Chuck Piatt replaces retired principal C.L. Dunn at Northwest Elementary School. Spring Place and Chatsworth elementary schools will share an assistant principal.

Piatt is the only “new” principal in the school system this year, but he’s no stranger to the district. He’s worked 26 years in Murray County Schools, serving as assistant principal at Gladden Middle for four years, a fifth-grade teacher at Eton Elementary two years and a fifth-grade teacher at Chatsworth Elementary for 20 years. His last stop was at the middle school.

“(Working at an elementary school) is just like coming home,” Piatt said. “The elementary students have so much potential to develop, and they are very creative.”

The school has a new computer lab with 30 computers and one of the old classrooms was converted into a conference room Piatt plans for teachers and parents to meet in to enhance communication.

At Coker Elementary, Principal Donna Standridge was working with teachers and parents through open house orientations last week, and she said Coker isn’t anticipating any major structural changes this year.

“We had a real successful year last year with the 160 days,” Standridge said. “We’re going to continue to do what we’ve done in the past.”

With a longer summer break than in past years, many students are ready to get back to school by the time the first day arrives, several parents and educators said.

Heather Fenwick said her two elementary school aged children are excited to get back to class.

“I like (the 160-day calendar),” Fenwick said. “They have longer in the summer. At first, I didn’t think I was going to like it because I thought they went to school longer, but it’s worked out real well for us.”

Fenwick said she has one child in pre-school, one about to enter kindergarten, and one who went through kindergarten teacher Renda Baggett’s summer program before beginning class about four years ago.

Parent Adrian Stone said Baggett’s yearly summer programs made a big difference for her children, too. It made “all the difference” for her son Zeb, now a first-grader, she said. Baggett invites all her incoming students to summer sessions for about four hours one day a week in June and July.

Parents are invited to stay for a few minutes if their children have trouble adjusting, she said, but the sessions are designed so that students can become used to their new school gradually rather than trying to assimilate on the first day of class when the building is filled with hundreds of children and adults they don’t know.

“I think it helped tremendously,” said Stone, who is also a seventh-grade language arts teacher at Gladden Middle School. “We love Miss Baggett, and her summer program is why I liked to have both of my children, and I hope my third one, in her class.”

Baggett has taught kindergarten for 25 years and she said she’s done a summer program to introduce students to their schools every year except her first one. She said she isn’t paid for the extra time she puts into the summer program, but some teachers, like her, have adopted the practice anyhow because they know how well it works.

Baggett said she loves her kindergarten students and doesn’t want to move to any other grade. Why kindergarten?

“Oh, just seeing their little faces when they get it, you know?” she said. “And they just light up! Kindergarten, you know what? There’s nothing like a kindergarten child. They are so eager. They’re just like a little sponge. I can say, ‘Y’all, today we’re going to go run around the field,’ and they’re excited about it. It doesn’t matter because everything’s new... We give them a foundation.”

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