SOUTHSIDE — Southside Charter High School officials are proud of the school’s role in students’ lives and new updates to its campus.
On Dec. 13, the school celebrated its Project Future Story and the opening of the school’s auditorium, which was added onto the building. Project Future Story is the school’s way of helping students identify what they’d like their future to include and then achieve that goal.
Through a partnership with the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville, Project Future Story also helps students earn industry certification and college credit.
“The Future Story grows out of the idea that each kid needs to come here and decide where you’ve been, where you are, where you want to go,” Principal Roger Ried said.
Before construction began on its own auditorium in September 2015, the 400-student high school used Southside Middle School’s cafeteria as an auditorium space, which Ried said had its ups and downs.
“Sometimes, it’s a great place to see a performance but not always hear a performance,” he said. “That’s everything from academic success to extracurricular activities, whether it’s choir, band or a play — you want to see and hear everything that’s going on. [The new auditorium will] just make things brighter.”
The nearly 900-seat, 17,000-square-foot facility cost $4 million and was completed in November.
“This auditorium can do at a smaller scale just about anything that a Broadway theater can do,” Clayton Vaden with Lewis Architects Engineers said to the crowd at the celebration, which was held in the auditorium. “You can obviously have a choral production. You can have an orchestral production. You can do a play — a small Broadway play — here.”
Vaden said the auditorium features equipment that students can learn how to control behind the scenes.
“You’ve got powered rigging that will allow you to fly scenery up and down, which is just a great thing that speeds up the change of scenery for a play,” he said.
The Project Future story celebration also included students in the Jobs for America’s Graduates program participating in mock interviews with various employers, and tours of Southside Preschool, where high school administrators said the Project Future Story truly begins.
Southside is in its second full year of being a charter high school, which allows it to offer enhanced opportunities for students, Ried said.
Senior McKinley Fox, who plans to study biology and either attend medical school or become a nurse anesthetist, said she will graduate from Southside Charter High School with 37 college hours, making her a college sophomore.
“Having all these college hours before I get into college not only allowed me to take them at a cheaper price but also let me get ahead in college,” she said to the audience. “It was all possible because Southside became a charter school.”
Senior Josh Millikin said taking college-level courses at Southside helped him realize he does not want to enter the medical field like he thought he did. He plans to enter the pilot program at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.
“I’m blessed to be going on to be a student athlete in college, and it’s taught me that as I’m going to have to be going to team meetings, and balancing my studying at the same time, that I’m going to need to make better study habits,” he said.
Sharisa Herekamp, a senior, said Southside’s partnership with UACCB has helped her get a head start on achieving her dream.
“My dream after college is to become a radiation therapist, where I’ll be in a unique position to work with children who are suffering [with] cancer in children’s hospitals all across the country,” she said. “Thanks to Southside, I have been able to take almost 37 college hours, and I’ll be able to apply for the radiology program at Arkansas State within my first semester there. If I had attended any other school, this might not have even been possible.”
Kolton Peacock, a senior, said he will graduate from Southside with a certificate of proficiency in industrial technology.
“After high school, I plan to continue to go to UACCB, where I can get my associate degree and transfer to a four-year college, where I can either get my bachelor’s or master’s degree in industrial technology, then move on to be a pipeline welder and then end up saving my own money and eventually open my own fabrication shop,” he said.
Ried said some students are even graduating with 60 hours of college credit and that having an auditorium allows all of the students’ talents to be better showcased.
“When you put kids in charge of their future, when you put young men and women in charge of their future, they will own it, and they’ll take it to a level that I and others had not even anticipated,” Ried said.
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.