Enterprise Ozark Community College

High school students return to school
Jim Cook / Media General News Service
March 15, 2007

ENTERPRISE – It was a fine day for a reunion.

A near-perfect spring day greeted students from the storm-ravaged
Enterprise High School as they gathered for the first time at the
place that will serve as their new school – Enterprise-Ozark
Community College.

The mood was excited and eager. Smiles could be seen. Hugs and
handshakes were exchanged among teachers and students. Jokes were
told, memories exchanged.

Things were getting back to normal, or as close to normal as it’s
ever going to get for a school that lost eight of its own in a
deadly tornado.

“We’re going to love each other through this,” Principal Rick Rainer
told the nearly 1,200 students gathered in the college gym to receive
their new class assignments and instructions.

The new campus and schedule will pose challenges for the students.
The familiar rhythms of school life have been replaced by a new regime.
The school day now begins at 12:30 p.m. except on Fridays. Ninety
minute classes are being packed into 60 minutes. The college has no
bells, and teachers will have to keep time themselves. Enterprise
High School had 80 classrooms, EOCC has 42, so some classes are
doubling up as a result.

None of that seemed to bother math teacher Nancy Jennings as she
greeted students at the gym door.

“It’s so good to see these faces,” she said.

Channell Palmer was just glad to be back in school.

“It helps us know everything is going to be OK, that we are going to
bounce back from it,” she said.

But for all the talk of renewal and getting back on course, reminders
of March 1 remain. Some students came to school in casts and on crutches. Others’ pain was not as visible, but no less real.

R.J. Smith occasionally wakes up at night, roused by sounds reminiscent
of the tornado. Karin Lainez is coming to terms with never again seeing
a classmate she’s known since fourth grade. Josh Grantham was away when
the tornado hit and came home to a world turned upside down.

“When I got home I didn’t have a school and I had lost two of my
friends,” he said.

Nevertheless, the work of putting a school back together goes on, and Wednesday’s gathering at the temporary campus at EOCC was the first
step on the school’s long road home.

Perhaps, Rainer summed it up best.

“Enterprise High School is where we are,” he said.