Monday, March 20, 2023

Have You Heard about the Cherokee Gym?





From a Colbert County reader: 

The gym suffered a water leak in the summer of 2021. The board refused to do anything about it. They wanted to “wait to see what happened.” While waiting, the leak turned into the floor buckling to be almost 4 feet in height. The school was told to put caution tape around it and carry on with daily activities. When a fit was pitched about not having anywhere to have graduation for the class of 2022 the board came in and pulled the floor up and put down plywood with red duck tape to cover the nails. The class of 2022 had to graduate on that! 

The gym has been unusable for sports teams for 2 years. The basketball teams have had to play at the old middle school gym that has been closed since 2007 and is run down and a rat home! Parents and community members have sent 100s of emails, called over and over, went to board meetings, etc. and they have gotten nowhere.

The board has spent $1000s on engineers to come out and look at the structure of not only the gym but the rest of the school. When looking at the rest of the school they found a crack in the wall in the auditorium. The board shut the auditorium down “for further testing.” This caused all formal events awards ceremonies, coronation, the beauty pageant, etc to be moved to the gym on the plywood floor that is duck taped together. 

This has gotten completely out of hand and something has to be done! Recently they sent out another engineer to dig holes around the school to see if water would fill up in them. Out of 6 holes only 3 were found with water and they are in a low area where water would be found. 

The engineer giving the report stated there was no reason found to not fix the gym. But still we have no plans in action to fix it.

*****


 Do Not Be Wise In Words, Be Wise In Deeds...

2 comments:

  1. At this point, a 'recall' of all Colbert County school board members and the superintendent should be considered.

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  2. Something is going on at that school, especially in the Elementary they cannot keep good students and have so many great families leave Cherokee and seek out other schools. I think the board needs to intervene with the school and reevaluate people in positions to let them go if they are not doing their job. It amazes me how this school is still open, and the teacher's children are not enrolled at this school. Why would you teach at a school your kids do not attend? two kids from the high school are out of the district but their parents are teachers there. out of all the teaching and faculty that is the only two I am aware of. I have seen firsthand that school officials are unprofessional and not following school protocols. The gym is the last of my concerns. I am concerned with why people in the district go to schools like Covenant, Muscle Shoals, Mars Hill, and Colbert Heights? should this not be a concerning topic for the board. They are losing money by people in the district go to other schools. In other cities, this is not allowed to go to other schools. If you are in the district they do not care, you have to attend that school. it is very sad to see the schools not being kept up like Lauderdale county schools, which is ran by a great man. Mr. Hill does a wonderful job for those schools, and cares about the representation his schools are getting. Waterloo is even a very nice school. They need to start inside the school and get to the root of the problem and go from there. this is not all Mr. Hand's fault. I think he is doing a fine job with what he has been dealt with.

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