Houlka Students are Starting the School Year Off Right

HOULKA, Miss. (WCBI)- Summer ending and school starting back is something most students don’t look forward to, but that’s not the case in Houlka.

Students will be starting the new school year in a new building.

A new year and a new building.

The doors are finally open at the new Houlka Attendance Center facility.

Last month marked four years since a fire burned down the school’s original building.

“I think that the community is really amazed that the building is actually as nice as it is. Just the wide hallways the Wildcat logo in the floor tiles the restaurant facilities. I think they’re just appreciative of it and are just amazed that we are that we’ve gotten to this point and will be able to start school here in the morning,” Dr. Betsy Collums.

Reaching this point seemed so far-fetched when the process started.

“The first thing that we had to do was to have our 1935 building off the historic registry even though it was debris lying on the ground it took us three months to actually get that process completed. After that we had to go through trying to have it cleaned up with it being an older building we had to deal with the asbestos regulations that held up the process and that took a little longer was more expensive,” said Collums.

Math teacher Angie Halford had been teaching for a decade when flames destroyed her old classroom.

“It was very disheartening. It was just a few days before we started the school year. We had kind of prepared all summer. At that time I’ve been teaching for around ten years, so I had like ten years worth of materials and things that I have collected and things that I use in my classroom and it all burned up,” said Halford.

Halford is excited to be calling a new classroom home in the nearly three million dollar facility.

“This building is great I teach with a team of four, and we’ve just been here all summer just getting to decorate and put things on the wall and just looking forward to being in this building everything is great I’m really excited,” said Halford.

Parents say they are happy the building is done in time for the new school year that kicks off tomorrow.