Rock Bridge High School

Rock Bridge High School

"Where learning is for life."
Address
4303 S. Providence Road
Columbia, Missouri 65203
United States
Information
School type Public high school
Established 1973
School district Columbia Public Schools
Principal Dr. Gregory Irwin
Grades 9-12
Enrollment 1,906 [1] (2015-16)
Athletics conference Independent
Team name Bruins
Rival David H. Hickman High School
Newspaper The ROCK
Yearbook Flashback
Online News BearingNews
Website School website

Rock Bridge High School is a public high school located in southern Columbia, Missouri. The school serves grades 9 through 12 and is a part of the Columbia Public Schools.

History

Due to the increasing population of Columbia in the 70's, and the crowding of David H. Hickman High School towards the end of the 1960s, the Columbia Board of Education decided to form a new high school. The board bought 42 acres (170,000 m2) of land in Southern Columbia and started the construction of the new high school. The name Rock Bridge was chosen because of the schools proximity to the natural rock bridge of Rock Bridge State Park. Construction started in 1972 on the original portion of the building, consisting of 18 classrooms and one office area in the present-day east wing of the building. Many of these classrooms were connected by motorized folding walls, many of which are still operational and in use. The design of the original portion and its three planned additions, of which two were completed, won a national award in school design. The school was planned to open in 1971, but funding issues pushed back construction of the second phase of the building. As such, this original portion sat unused for a year or two while the second portion was not yet complete.

Construction started on the second portion in early 1972, which added the "Main Commons", another office area, the library, the gymnasium, and a few specialty classrooms underneath that area. In September 1973, with the completion of the second portion, Rock Bridge was considered "complete enough" to open and had a class of 583 students, mostly sophomores and juniors. This high school was the second centrally air conditioned school built in Columbia, MO, after Oakland Junior High School north of town. In 1974, the planetarium was completed with a capacity of nearly 90 people and featuring a state-of-the-art star ball and a full-dome projection system It is now room 303. In 1979, the west wing opened, which was basically a mirror image of the original 1971 building but with a finished basement. The west wing featured about ten general-purpose classrooms, as well as science, art, and band rooms, providing the school with a then-total of about 40 classrooms. A lift (elevator) provides access to the basement area, to keep the facility handicap-accessible. A north wing similar in design to the east and west wings was proposed but never came to fruition, citing slower growth during the 1980s than planned.

Three new science classrooms, as well as a performing arts center, were added in 1992. Enrollment reached 1000 in the 1995-96 school year.

In 2000, a large addition opened between the east and west wings, featuring seven science classrooms, eight English and Social Studies classrooms, seven foreign language classrooms, a new Media Center, and three new computer labs. Thereafter, several areas of the original building were renovated to serve a new purpose. As of 2010-2011, the school had Wi-Fi throughout the media center, commons, and main hallways, with the entire building wired in the summer of 2012.

In January 2013 Rock Bridge opened a new auxiliary gym due to the expected ninth graders to begin attending high school following the secondary redistricting in August. The area under the auxiliary gym featured a new wrestling room, making room for three new math classrooms in the former location. A new weight room was also added.

Structure

Rock Bridge runs on a block scheduling format during the hours of 8:55 AM to 4:05 PM. This format is structured so that students have four 90-minute-long classes each day. However, most of these classes meet every other day for a total of eight classes for the year. Block scheduling was established in the 1994-95 school year.[2]

Academics

The school offers 18 Advanced Placement courses and a multitude of honors classes available to students. However, RBHS does not weight grade point averages.

Athletics

Rock Bridge High offers a variety of sports. Fall sports include Cross Country, Football, Girls Golf, Boys Soccer, Softball, Boys Swimming/Diving, Girls Tennis, and Volleyball. Winter sports include Basketball and Wrestling. Spring sports include Baseball, Boys Golf, Boys Tennis, Girls Swimming/Diving, Girls Soccer, and Track & Field. Year round sports include Cheerleading and Poms. Rock Bridge is a perennial powerhouse in both boys and girls tennis, having won the Girls State Title in 1999, 2002, 2003, 2011 and 2014, as well as the Boys State Title in 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012. At the club level, Rock Bridge fields a Boys Varsity Lacrosse team in the spring.[3]

Journalism

From the time the school opened journalism has been part of the course offerings for the school. There was a newspaper, The Rock as well as a yearbook, Flashback. In 1995 the school created a prerequisite class called Journalistic Writing, and the paper became a monthly publication. Since then Southside Media has grown. In addition to the newspaper and yearbook, the journalism department created a special edition magazine Southpaw in 2005, and in 2011 an exclusively online news source, Bearing News. The current longstanding and award-winning journalism advisor is Robin Stover.

The Rock


The newspaper began on letter-sized sheets that were published through a class. In 1994 The Rock began its run as a monthly publication.

Flashback

The school’s inaugural yearbook covered activities, academics, sports, and student portraits. Under the guidance of its first editor, David Kintner, the fourteen person staff produced a 144-page book. Now the Flashback staff regularly covers the people from Rock Bridge High School in a spring delivery book that tops 350 pages.

Southpaw


In 2005 the staff decided to add a special edition component to the journalism program because the monthly papers were running thirty-six pages, and the staff worried students weren't reading The Rock at one setting. It was published on news print for the first few years, and in 2009 it assumed a magazine form. Mustafa Mohammad was the first editor of Southpaw.

Bearing News

In 2011 the editors of The Rock decided to move the school’s publications onto the web. Avantika Khatri, Shivangi Singh, and Jack Schoelz created this online news site with the purpose of producing content daily created by staff members from The Rock and Flashback.

Notable former students

References

  1. ↑ Columbia Public Schools 2015-16 Enrollment
  2. ↑ http://cpsk12.schoolwires.net/domain/5242
  3. ↑ http://www.bruinathletics.com/

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.