Tulsa World: New Owasso elementary open for business

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New Owasso elementary open for business
Stone Canyon is part of a $42 million bond package.

Kelli Ellis takes a picture of her daughter, fourth-grader Sydney Ellis, on Wednesday, the first day of school at the new Stone Canyon Elementary School in Owasso. RHETT MORGAN/Tulsa World

By RHETT MORGAN World Staff Writer
Published: 8/20/2009 2:39 AM
Last Modified: 8/20/2009 4:37 AM

OWASSO — Equal parts greeter and pedestrian-traffic cop, librarian Laura Harris stood and smiled at the entrance of Stone Canyon Elementary School.

"I had a little girl ask me, 'Are you nervous?'" Harris said. "I said: 'Yes. I am nervous. But we all are because it's all new.' "

The $15 million school, nestled in the expansive Stone Canyon residential district in western Rogers County, opened Wednesday.

Harris came to the prekindergarten-through-fifth-grade school after spending 15 years as a first-grade teacher at Owasso's Mills Elementary School.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she said. "You can just feel the excitement."

Part of a $42 million bond package that voters passed in November 2007, Stone Canyon is Owasso's eighth elementary school and the first built in the district since Barnes Elementary School opened in the fall of 2006.

Scott and Rhonda Wright came to Stone Canyon on Wednesday to drop off two daughters, a kindergartner and a third-grader.

"It's very nerve-wracking," Rhonda Wright said. "There's just pure chaos right now. I just want to make sure that I know where to get my kids at the end of the day.

"Communication, I think, could be a little better," she said. "But I know it's new and everybody's trying to do the best they can."

The Wright children transferred from Hodson Elementary School, a couple of miles northwest of Stone Canyon.

"Look at the building. It's just unbelievable," Scott Wright said. "We can drive through here on the way to our house. So we've kept up with the progress. And with our kindergartner starting, we tried to build up a little anticipation in her, so it wasn't so rough when she goes."

The school was built on land donated by the Oxley family, for whom the Oxley Nature Center in Tulsa is named.

Principal George Holderman said Stone Canyon features a pod design. Each level has its own pod — a lobby that branches into six classrooms, he said.

To be consistent with the nature theme, the pods are named for insects such as the ant, bumblebee and grasshopper, Holderman said.

"That adds to the creativity of the school, but it also helps the younger students get familiarized with where they are supposed to go," he said.

Stone Canyon will house about 300 students and the district's pre-K program, which was in the Sixth Grade Center. It serves about 150 students per half-day session.

Plenty of exposed dirt, as well as heavy machinery, sat near the school Wednesday. Holderman said the school was finished except for the gymnasium and playground, both of which should be operational in about a month.

A redistricting, completed in May, aimed to balance the student counts at all eight elementaries. But with Stone Canyon over enrollment projections and unable to hire additional teachers, roughly 30 students who desired transfers and didn't live in the Stone Canyon boundaries had to revert to their home school, Holderman said.

"It was a tough call," he said. "But we also have to be sensitive to the class sizes. You don't want to have 35 students in a classroom. The good thing about Owasso is that all the schools are good."

Holderman has taught at two Owasso elementaries and spent the last four years as an assistant principal at the Sixth Grade Center.

"The building's built, and it's a beautiful building," he said. "But the teachers create the school where the learning is going to take place and open up the minds and creativity of the students."

Rhett Morgan 581-8395
rhett.morgan@tulsaworld.com By RHETT MORGAN World Staff Writer

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momofweethree, (8/21/2009 7:37:07 AM)

Would've been nice if someone in the district did their work and instead of approving transfers during the summer would have actually counted seats so that parents didn't receive phone calls a week before school was to start telling them to revert to their original school. We had already bought school supplies for this school, went to the meetings, had our kids enrollment paperwork in and did all our homework.

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