Private school renovations — even multimillion dollar ones — don’t usually make news, but one in Owasso is.
Rejoice Schools' new campus includes storm shelters to accommodate almost 1,700 people. That's all 965 students in preschool through 12th grade, plus about 700 more people.The elementary and middle school gyms are built to withstand EF5 tornadoes.
"Those walls are 12 inches thick reinforced concrete. It's all tied together, one big block, and it's sitting on piers that go down many feet in the ground as an anchor. It's really neat construction," said Rejoice Schools Superintendent Craig Shaw from the middle school gym floor after a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new campus. "It's the most expensive part of our construction, too. It was more per square foot there than anywhere else in this facility."
"With everything that's happened across Oklahoma, we were really serious about what we wanted to see happen there, and we're glad to have those places of safety for our children," Shaw said.
In 2013, seven students in Moore died when Plaza Towers Elementary School was hit by an EF5 tornado.
A study done after the Moore tornado found only 15 percent of Oklahoma public schools have a shelter that could withstand an EF5 tornado, and 62 percent don't have a storm shelter at all.
A 2014 initiative to sell up to half a billion dollars in bonds to pay for more shelters never made the ballot.
Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb was on hand for Rejoice Schools’ ribbon cutting. He's uncertain whether there will be a renewed effort to put more storm shelters in public schools.
"The legislators that were engaged in the storm shelter effort — there were probably four or five state representatives that were engaged in that — I don't know where that effort is right now, but I'd be surprised if that wasn't brought up again," Lamb said.
