First Look at Good Shepherd School

The original one caught fire in December. And for the past four months, students have been attending other schools during the remodeling work. When the students go back they can expect their same old school with some minor changes. Walking down the hallways of Good Shepherd school it looks more like the week before students come back from summer vacation with new name tags on lockers and books barely unpacked. But the students are actually coming back from spring break and theyll be walking down hallways that stood empty for almost four months whil crews cleaned - these are the hallways they will come back to Monday. A cigarette butt thrown into a garbage bag after a bingo game in the schools activity center destroyed that part of the building and left the rest with smoke damage. "We basically had a shell to rebuild," says Deacon Ed Wilkerson. And rebuild they did - from cleaning 12 hundred books to adding fire doors in each wing to completely reconstructing parts of the building. "We had to take out celiing tiles, replace heating area duct work, put in new carpentry." They also painted the walls to make sure the old part of the school blended but not everything is the same this is where the activty center used to stand. "When I walk in those front doors it really looks like a totally different building to me. When I see that block wall there Ive been coming in here for 20 years now and thats different." Despite the tragedy of fire the difference the students will experience Monday isnt all bad. "It certainly is an opportunity for us as a church to rethink what we want to offer our community." But first they want to think about getting back to a regular school day in a regular school. Another big change students will face is eating bagged lunches in the gym because the cafeteria still needs work. They wont get back in that part of the school until the fall.