After being displaced for 18 months, the staff and students at Kennedy High School in Winston-Salem, N.C., have returned to a renovated campus with a new front entrance, improved heating and air systems, better lighting, an updated gym and a new color scheme.
The Winston-Salem Journal reports that the $19 million project consisted of about 106,000 square feet of renovations and 5,400 square feet of new space.
Built in 1963, the reopened school was unveiled to the public this week at a “Coming Home” ceremony.
Kennedy High, a magnet school with a focus in career and technical education, has an enrollment of about 380 students. It originally opened as a junior high.
During the renovation, most students attended classes in unused sections of Winston-Salem Preparatory Academy, less than a mile away. Other students were housed in a building at the district's nearby Career Center.
“It’s like not being home,” assistant principal Kim Ashby said about being away from Kennedy. “You can’t spread out. You had to share offices. We were compact. I make the analogy that it was like living in someone else’s house.”
The architect is Walter Robbs Callahan & Pierce Architects.
More>> YouTube video from Winston-Salem-Forsyth County Schools:
