St. Albans High School December 24, 2003

Photograph by Mark Hyre

Workers were unloading boxes in the St. Albans High School
cafeteria Monday. The renovated school will open Aug. 26.


School Principal Tom Williams surveys the high school
gym from a second-floor perch set up for the media.


The school’s red dragon mascot can be found everywhere:
in the gym, hallways and here, just inside the school’s entrance,
stamped into concrete blocks.


Science teachers tour a new lab at the school.


A truck lowers a new sign in front of St. Albans High on Monday.

Tom Williams gazed out a second-floor classroom window Monday morning and watched a truck lower a granite slab into its permanent resting spot along Kanawha Terrace in St. Albans.
Teens honked their car horns and hollered out windows as they sped past. The sign read, St. Albans High School.
Hot diggity dog,said Williams, the high school’s high-energy principal. Oh, this is exciting.
Parents, students, teachers and administrators waited two years for this. They endured two years at Trailer Park High, a makeshift cluster of portable classrooms spread across a gravel parking lot.
On Monday, teachers and administrators stepped into a newly renovated school. They hardly recognized it.
Wow, one teacher said as she checked out the new library.
In two weeks, a thousand students will march into the school.
Much work remains to be done. The 800 seats for the auditorium haven’t arrived. The gymnasium bleachers haven’t been installed. Ceiling tiles are missing in classrooms and hallways.
On Monday, workers were still wiring the school, assembling furniture and pouring concrete sidewalks outside.
Kanawha County school leaders have promised that the school will open on time. A $23 million bond paid for the floor-to-ceiling renovations.
We’re backed up, acknowledged school facilities chief Chuck Wilson, who expected the school to be ready by last week. We’ve had a tremendous amount of rain. But as long as we’re able to move in, we’re going to be OK.
The commons area outside the school’s entrance was a field of mud Monday.
I’m not sure we’ll have grass by the first day of school,” Wilson said, “but we’ll have a big yard of straw, anyhow.
The high school’s gym, with space for 1,000 fans, will be the second-largest in Kanawha County, behind only the Charleston Civic Center. A local artist has painted a large red dragon, the school’s mascot, at center court.
Other interesting features at the new school: marble windowsills, temperature control switches in every classroom, a bridge walkway over the cafeteria, a computer lab with 300 new computers, faux skylights, glass brick walls in several rooms and a 72-student distance learning lab.
Outside, there’s an amphitheater near the front of the school and a patio that overlooks the baseball field out back.
There are also glitches: lockers that open into one another, and a boys restroom in which the urinals are visible from the hallway when you open the door.
Teachers will receive training throughout the week. They’ll talk about instructional strategies, the school’s mission and stress management.
About 20 new teachers have joined the staff. The high school will accept ninth-graders for the first time.
Some teachers planned to unpack classroom supplies today. The fire marshal will inspect the school later this week. The heating and cooling also will undergo rigorous testing.
It’s been a tough two years, said school board member Jim Crawford, who lives in St. Albans and visits the school almost daily. But it’s a far cry from what we had before. Anybody who attends St. Albans High School will be proud to be a student there.
The high school’s grand opening will be 10 a.m. Aug. 23. The public is invited.

Our 40th reunion picture now graces the walls of the room specifically devoted to history and memories of SAHS High School by "The St. Albans Shoneys."
If your in the neighborhood. Check it out.


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