TO PARTICIPATE
To suggest a name for Walker County's new K-8 school, go to the district's website at walkerschools.org through Sunday and click on the "Name Our School" link on the home page.
Everyone's referring to Walker County's newest new kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school as, well, "the K through Eight."
School board member Phyllis Hunter is a bit concerned that the informal name might stick.
"We don't want it known as the 'K through Eight' forever," she said.
To get a "real" name for the school, now under construction on U.S. 27 near Rock Spring, Ga., the school district is inviting residents to go online to the district's website and fill a blank space with what they think would be a good name for the facility. The "Click Here to Name Our School" link will be active only through Sunday. The school board will consider all of the entries.
"Instead of us just coming up with a name, we wanted the input from the community," Hunter said. "This is something the community's going to be involved in. It's their school."
School board members haven't had much luck coming up with a name on their own.
"Half of them were not even serious, because we couldn't even think of one," Hunter said.
The person who submits the winning entry will get the satisfaction of seeing his name in lights, since the school will have a lighted sign out front on U.S. 27.
"It's an electronic sign that they'll have for messaging and that sort of thing," said J. Patrick Neuhoff, the Chattanooga architect who designed the school.
Along with naming the school, the district needs to come up with a mascot and school colors, Hunter said.
The new K-8 school is near Rock Spring, but that name's already been claimed by Rock Spring Elementary School.
Another place name might work for the new school, Hunter said. "There may be somebody in the area that knows the history of that land," she said.
Tim Omarzu covers Catoosa and Walker counties for the Times Free Press. Omarzu is a longtime journalist who has worked as a reporter and editor at daily and weekly newspapers in Michigan, Nevada and California. Stories he's covered include crime in blighted parts of metro Detroit and Reno, Nev.; environmental activists tree-sitting in California's Sierra Nevada foothills; attempts by the Michigan Militia to take over a township¹s government in northern Michigan. A native of Michigan, ...
