Among the renovations completed at school over the summer, the most notable might be the fresh new coat of paint that has been slapped onto the walls of the building. In hopes of brightening the school and making it seem as though a new atmosphere has been established, what the paint really did was cover up years of memorabilia and remove recent additions to the walls that commemorated important parts of the school.

The color of a door may seem like just that, a color, but when that door is slathered with an orange-brown color, it might be more difficult to move past it. According to Window Nation, a light blue door may add a friendly feeling and a black door shows strength and sophistication. Unfortunately, the only thing that a burnt orange color adds is a grimace on the face of students and teachers alike.

Despite this color being a surprise to all members of the school, including Principal Douglas Nelson, it is something that can not be undone. “The color of the classroom doors, was not on the [swatch sheet]. So that was a surprise to me too,” Nelson said.

On another level, these doors failed to do what seemed to be a major part in the renovations, which was not only to make the school more presentable, but to unite and strengthen people’s thoughts in relation to the aged look of the school. Doors within the ‘newer,’ English department wing of the school among other areas remain untouched by this paint, failing to establish a cohesive feeling throughout the school.

Beyond the doors, walls were upgraded to look and feel fresher, but this does not include the walls in the interior of classrooms. This is certainly an upgrade from the previous years of uncoordinated and splotchy paint jobs around the school but what failed to be preserved were the numerous drawings along the school walls. Along the math hallway the colorful art detailing the digits of Pi and tree of math operations have been covered up with no plan to reinstate or recreate the art. This art brightened the hallway and served as a reminder to the previous years of students.

According to Nelson, individual students and clubs can put in a request to redecorate the hallways, but history did not need to be erased. The Best Buddies wall of handprints, which was located in one of the most heavily traveled through intersections of the school, was painted over purposefully in order to make room and create opportunities for new students entering the building; the mural had barely existed for two years. Before the painting took place “When I talked to some of the adults and I’ve started to talk with students, we could have preserved it,” Nelson said.

As the school has been pushed off of the renovation list indefinitely, small projects to improve the school and keep it up to date will continue to take place. However, being removed from the list has made English teacher Annette Evans unsure of the future of the school. “There had been a plan in 2019 to renovate the place and they kicked that down the road to 2024 and now they kicked it down the road indefinitely, so the indefinitely certainly lends itself to a question of the future of the building,” Evans said.

The theory of the school potentially closing, which doesn’t have data to support it, brings into question the declining number of enrollments into the school every year. In combination with the plans to build a new school nearby, the theory may carry some validity. “It’s an interesting dynamic and it has happened before in the county where a neighborhood raises their children and likes the neighborhood so much that they stay, so there aren’t new families coming in. The locations of the schools are inevitably going to shift to meet the needs of the population,” Evans said.

The painting brought our school the breath of fresh air that it needed to restore confidence in the building but steps need to be taken to bring more personality back. An administrator sponsored mural or any sort of painting would instill more pride into students and teachers.