“Dear OHS, you are the school for me.” So reads the opening of Opelika’s beloved alma mater, a song all true Bulldogs know.
These days, however, OHS may not be so dear.
Plumbing and electrical problems abound.
Heating and air conditioning is sporadic and temperatures can fluctuate by 10 degrees from one classroom to the next.
Carpets are worn, faded and stained beyond recognition of their original colors.
School officials chase leaks all over the school, but some classrooms have been forced to succumb to buckets.
Ceiling tiles are missing, walls have holes and some of these things can’t be fixed or replaced - they don’t make the parts any more.
OHS may be dear to a great many of us, but the school is almost 40 years old now and it needs to be fixed.
The current facilities cannot continue to support the class sizes and student population we currently have.
Our school board has been an excellent steward of the monies given to it, making repairs and upgrades only when absolutely necessary, preparing for the day when a new school would need to be built.
We have now fallen behind with where we should be. It is time to rethink our plan to maintain and sustain, and push past toward growth and progress.
As a casual observer, you may not notice the current state of our high school.
The school’s black metal facade sits proudly facing Lafayette Parkway. The Opelika Center for the Performing Arts, the crown jewel of the arts in Opelika, stands tall for all to see.
However, those facades are just that - facades. Beneath that exterior is a rapidly rotting core.
The parts that have been built around that core, OPAC, the choral and band rooms, the foreign language hall and new gymnasium, all look great, designed to match the shell of the original school.
Take the time to actually stop by and see what is inside of that building, though. If you could see the holes in the ceilings, the age in the walls, you can see what monumental problems the school is facing.
Our kids have soldiered through, holding their heads high and continuing to try to maintain standards of excellence in spite of the decay around them.
What does it do to a child’s sense of pride to have water dripping around them in their classrooms?
What do we say to a child when their classroom can’t use the document camera or the smart board because the electrical grid can’t support the wattage?
We are and always have been a great school system.
Opelika graduates go on to do great and wonderful things.
We win Academy Awards and Emmys.
We serve our country in our armed forces, rising through the ranks and occasionally giving that greatest of sacrifices in the name of one’s country.
We become doctors, lawyers and business executives.
We even leave the bounds of Earth and travel into space, going boldly into that final frontier.
Today’s kids need a primed and ready launching pad of their own, one that can stand up to the challenges and issues facing a 21st century world, so that they may go where no one has gone before.
The city council’s proposed sales tax increase can and will help pay for this project.
We know such a tax is regressive and could be problematic in these economic times, but our answer remains the same.
We all owe a life debt to the generations of Opelikans who came before us, the men and women who gave of themselves so that we, the future generations, would have better than what they had.
They paved our roads and built our schools, encouraging us to want more and have more.
We stand at a precipice, able to do for these kids what was done for us.
Are we going to stand up and allow these children to stand on our shoulders, letting them see further and reach their potential?
We must, in good conscience, help build that bridge to the future for the children of this town.
As those children go, so does the life and legacy of our town.
Giving up and now and doing something on the cheap will only harm us, and a generation of children may be washed down the drain of lowered expectations and broken dreams.
For the sake of our children, for the sake of those countless yet unborn generations that will come after, we must do this.
We want a “Dear OHS” once again, a school in which we can all take pride.
“To serve thee ever, forget thee never, our dear OHS,” the alma mater ends.
Our alma mater is calling, Opelikans. Answer it and give her aid in her hour of need.
Her need is our need.
We are all in this together, and something must be done.
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