Joplin’s schools opened on time! The exclamation point says it all. Many — including the construction workers who made it happen — didn’t believe Joplin’s students, all 6,978 of them, could possibly be back behind school desks on Aug. 17, as promised.
The May 22 tornado that wreaked havoc throughout a third of the city destroyed six of the city’s 18 schools. Three others will require major repairs.
But two days after that devastating storm Supt. C. J. Huff said the schools would open on schedule.
He kept that promise — thanks to millions upon millions of dollars that poured into the stricken city from Washington, D.C., state government, the Red Cross, dozens of churches and individual donors from all 50 states and many foreign nations.
Today Joplin students are learning in mobile classrooms, in a hastily remodeled department store building and in patched up buildings due for more permanent repairs when time allows.
The destroyed schools will be replaced at a more measured pace in the years ahead. But it would be a safe bet that the 2011-12 Joplin school year will be a standout for the students and teachers alike. The kids will learn more, make firmer friends and build a huge store of special memories. The teachers and administrators will all perform at hyper levels because the need to overcome obstacles and deal with inconveniences dealt to Joplin by an act of fate somehow brings out the best in the human creature.
Like everyone else in today’s rebuilding Joplin, the students, their parents and the schools’ faculties will have stories to tell and satisfactions to cherish — along with sadnesses to endure — for the rest of their lives.
The opening of its schools right on time will be one red letter day on the new calendar Joplin now lives by; the calendar which makes May 22 Day One.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
