Orange Beach middle and high school ready for students

By Melanie LeCroy
Posted 8/14/19

During a meet and greet at Orange Beach High School last week, Dr. Erika McCoy, principal, assured parents that the school year would kick off strong, with little downtime.

“We don’t play …

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Orange Beach middle and high school ready for students

Posted

During a meet and greet at Orange Beach High School last week, Dr. Erika McCoy, principal, assured parents that the school year would kick off strong, with little downtime.

“We don’t play school the first week. The expectation is your child will learn on the first day. No grass is growing under our feet. We are going to go hard from day one and go hard until the end of the school year,” McCoy told the large crowd.

On Aug. 5, Orange Beach Middle and High Schools held a meet and greet for students and parents at the Orange Beach Community Center. It was opportunity for students to pick up their schedule and Chromebook, meet their teachers and get familiar with the campus.

The crowd was encouraged not to grab their schedule and go home.

“The truth is we need some time for our students to integrate into the flow of things and look at their schedule and see where things are located so our first week of school is seamless,” McCoy said.

McCoy and Dr. Robbie Smith, Orange Beach Middle School principal, presented a slide show to the group and spoke of the exciting things that happened over the summer.

“We had a mako vision day with a group of randomly selected students who came in and planned what we wanted our school to look and feel like. Some of the ideas that came out of our students spending time with our adults that day you will see. Our hallways were bland, and we really tried to address that and liven them up with some color. Even though these modular buildings are temporary it’s important that it feels like home,” McCoy said.

This year, grades seventh and eighth will have classes in an eight-room modular building next to the elementary school while grades ninth and tenth have a 10-room modular building across the street. Each building has a central hallway, office and bathrooms. The new state of the art school is on schedule to be complete for fall, 2020.

“A wise educator once told me that if you don’t do anything else wrong in this process you better get the people right. I cannot tell you how excited I am to serve alongside the people we have brought on board,” McCoy said. “They are dynamic educators. Every person in every position has a love for children and that is the most important thing when you are running a school,”

The faculty this year consists of 25 certified teachers, nine support staff, three administrators, three bus drivers, two school resource officers and 300 plus students.