8/30/04

Students Return to Renovated Schools

MAPS for Kids Makes it Possible

District and City officials toured the new Star Spencer High School on Monday, August 30, 2004, the first day for students to return to their school. (Left to right: Joe Clytus, OKCPS Board Vice Chair, Cliff Hudson, OKCPS Board Chair, Thelma R. Parks, Board District 5 Representative, and Eric Wenger, OCMAPS Project Manager.)

Some students couldn't wait for summer to end, believe it or not, so they could return to their schools they have been out of since the beginning of a MAPS for Kids project and fire, followed by MAPS for Kids renovations.

A bus tour marked the first day of classes for students at Star Spencer High school and Wheeler Community Learning Center.  Students at Star Spencer had been housed at the nearby Rogers Middle School for the last two years in order for the $3 million MAPS for Kids renovations could take place.  Wheeler students have held classes at Rancho Village Baptist Church for three years following a fire that gutted a good portion of the first floor.

Star Spencer High School is the first high school renovation project under the decade-long MAPS for Kids program.

Wheeler Community Learning Center, a Pre-K - 8 facility, is the first elementary renovation.

OCMAPS Program Manager Eric Wenger explains some of the new features seen in the newly renovated Wheeler Community Learning Center.

Some of the new features of the school include new walls, floors, doors, state-of-the-art wireless Internet connectivity, a Voice over I.P. telephone system and many more new items that will provide a better learning environment for students.

Also underway is the first new high school to be constructed due to MAPS for Kids, Douglass High School.  The new Douglass is slated to open in the fall of 2006.

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