Rockport Heights Elementary School in Arnold is celebrating five decades of learning, friendship and achievement this month.
As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, the school will be the grand marshal in the Arnold Days Parade on Sunday.
Then, on Sunday, Sept. 24, Rockport Heights, 3871 Jeffco Blvd., will hold an open house, and everyone who shares a piece of the school’s history is invited to attend.
“Our hope is that many former students, parents, faculty and staff will visit Rockport Heights. They can visit with retirees, check out their old classrooms, remember their times at Rockport, and maybe greet old friends and see how the building has changed,” said Nancy Joannes Strain, who was a teacher at the school for 25 years. “We’re hoping for a great turnout,” she said.
Doors will open at 1:30 p.m., and a short program will include all the principals, past and present. Marianna Austin, one of the first teachers at the school, will read a list of all the Rockport Heights teachers and staff who have died.
Retired teachers began planning the event last spring and will ask visitors to write down memories of their time at Rockport Heights on a 3-by-5-inch card, and all those cards will go in a scrapbook commemorating the event.
Strain said she hope people will enjoy that book for years to come, even “for Rockport’s 100th anniversary.”
The Kona Ice Truck and MoJo food truck will be on hand, offering food for purchase.
History
Rockport Heights, which is part of the Fox C-6 School District, opened its doors 50 years ago, in September 1967, to accommodate the rapidly-expanding student population at the time.
Throughout the 1960s, during the tail end of the baby boom, the district’s student population grew dramatically. In 1948, when the district was established, it had 255 students, according to the district’s website.
By the time Rockport Heights opened in 1967, it alone had 1,000 students, said George Guffey, the school’s first principal. Rockport Heights was the Fox district’s third elementary school.
In 1950, all the district’s children, in kindergarten through eighth grade, attended Fox Elementary. Fox High School was not built until 1955, according to the website.
The district’s second elementary school, Meramec Heights, was built in 1960. By the time the district began building Rockport Heights, there were so many families with young children in the area that the schools were bursting at the seams, said Guffey, 81, of St. Louis County.
“George Baxter was superintendent when it became necessary to plan for and build a new elementary, Guffey said. “A bond issue was approved. Before the building was even started (however), enrollment had increased so rapidly that another bond issue was needed (to build the school big enough to house the additional students.) That bond issue also was approved.”
The school had to be built as soon as possible, Guffey added.
“Due to the time it would take to have the architects redraw plans and complete the bidding process, the school, under (Superintendent) James Rickman’s (leadership), decided that the best solution was to build a second building behind the first, using the same architectural plans,” Guffey said.
As construction neared completion, students were asked to suggest names for the new school, and those names were handed over to parents and administrators, according to an article in a local newspaper.
“A committee consisting of PTA officers and principals narrowed the list to the possible names. The board of education then chose Rockport Heights from this list. Four students, Mike Browning, Gary Ogle, Carma Brown and Tara Tesreau, gave the name of Rockport and each received a check for five dollars for naming the new school,” the article said.
Guffey, who was principal at Rockport Heights for six years, said he does not remember the very first day classes were held at the school, but he remembers the jitters he felt at the beginning of each school year.
“All I remember is that every fall, I’d break out in a rash around my waist because I was afraid we’d misplace a child,” he said. “We’d pin tags on them with their addresses. We did everything, and each year we’d decide what worked and what didn’t work and try something new.”
He said the student population at Rockport Heights swelled to almost 1,300 children for a while and the district pulled in three mobile homes to use as classrooms to accommodate the students.
“We filled every room with chairs and desks and had no room for bookcases,” he said. “Sometimes it might just be a large custodial closet. We put them (students) anywhere that would hold them.”
Guffey said class sizes in the beginning were usually 35 to 40 students.
Kindergarten classes weren’t even held in the building at first. The district held kindergarten classes in the Bayshore (subdivision’s) Family Centre and New Hope Methodist Church, he said.
Despite the challenge of the large student population, Guffey said there were rewards over the six years he was principal at Rockport Heights.
“I enjoyed it. The community was very supportive,” he said. “Sure sometimes a parent would be upset, but the door was open. Parents came to the office and we worked it out. I found them very reasonable and cooperative,” he said.
Later, the Fox district named one of its elementary schools after Guffey – the George Guffey Elementary School in Fenton.
Austin, 87, of Arnold, who taught for 40 years, said Rockport Heights was everything she dreamed a school should be.
She began teaching in 1950 in a one-room schoolhouse that had students in first through eighth in a town in Southeast Missouri called Daisy. She joined the staff at Fox Elementary in 1960 and taught sixth grade. The school was so crowded that six army barracks buildings were placed on the campus to be used as classrooms. There were about 50 children in each classroom, she said.
“We had no water fountains. We had no restrooms. We had to use the restrooms at Fox Junior High and eat in their cafeteria, and we were not well received,” Austin said.
When the new Rockport Heights building opened, Austin was ecstatic.
“It was a beautiful, beautiful place. I remember that beautiful room with all those windows and there was a sink and running water in the room,” she said. “I just loved having a school I could call my own.”
Austin said, wherever she was, though, whether in a window-lined room or a crowded barracks building, she was called to teach.
“I loved teaching, from the 1950s all the way through. I loved working with the older (elementary school) children’s minds. They were still young enough to like school. And almost always I had good, good children. Oh you would have one or two who would give you trouble but not much.”
“Several of my students became Fox teachers,” she said.
Strain was one of those students and worked at Rockport before Austin retired, in 1990.
“It was really neat,” Strain said. “I got to teach with my teacher.”
Janine Hueter is the current principal at Rockport Heights Elementary and has just started her 13th year in that job. She said the school hasn’t been overcrowded in a very long time, especially now that the district has moved all its sixth-grade students to the middle schools. Rockport Heights’ enrollment is 497 for the 2017-2018 school year.
“We lost 100 sixth-graders (since last school year),” she said. “We also are in an area that is landlocked and there’s not a lot of new development.”
Hueter said she’s looking forward to seeing former students and retirees at the open house.
“I’m hoping it will be a total community event,” she said.
Parade
Rockport Heights has had six principals over the years, and four of those principals will represent the school in the Arnold Days Parade – Guffey, Hueter, Charles Hudson and Joe Werner. They will be joined by retirees and current staff and students.
The Fox district now has about 12,000 students enrolled at its two high schools, four middle schools, 11 elementary schools, early childhood center and alternative high school.
New LOOKING BACK features are posted regularly on the Leader website. Send ideas for a local historical feature to nvrweakly@aol.com or bring or mail it to the Leader office, 503 N. Second St. (P.O. Box 159), Festus, 63028. Please include your name, phone number and a brief description of your idea. Photos are also appreciated.
