Joplin High School is a public high school located in
Joplin, Missouri
Joplin is a city in Jasper County, Missouri, Jasper and Newton County, Missouri, Newton counties in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Missouri. The bulk of the city is in Jasper County, while the southern portion is in Newton County. J ...
, United States, founded in 1885. The school serves students in grades 9 through 12 and is the only traditional high school in the
Joplin School District
The Joplin School District is located in Jasper and Newton Counties in the City of Joplin, Missouri. It serves more than 7,700 students in the school district. In 1911, the students built a biplane and on October 11, 1911 Harold Robinson piloted the plane and it crashed, killing a bystander, James Kinney. A successful 1915 referendum allocated $350,000 for a new school, which opened in January 1918. In 1955, the new building was already too small to hold all the students, and a new $2.5 million bond was approved. When this proved to be too small of an amount of funding, voters rejected two additional bonds, leading to a student walk-out in 1957 in support of new facilities. A bond in early 1958 was approved to finish construction of the school, and classes commenced in the latest building that fall. Joplin was racially integrated without incident.
Later, in 1968, Joplin High School split into two high schools, one named Parkwood at 2104 Indiana Avenue and the other was named Memorial High School at 310 W. 8th Street. Joplin had two public high schools for the next 17 years until the Baby Boom enrollment bubble burst, leading to the consolidation of the two back into Joplin High School.
Extensive renovations completed in 2003, and a television studio was completed in 2005.
2011 tornado
The 2011 Joplin tornado that killed 161 people in Joplin extensively damaged the high school and Franklin Tech. The high school's graduation ceremonies had taken place about three miles away on the
Missouri Southern State University
Missouri Southern State University (Missouri Southern, MSSU, or MoSo) is a public university in Joplin, Missouri. It was established in 1937 as Joplin Junior College. The university enrolled 4,346 students in Fall 2021.
History
Missouri Southern ...
campus shortly before the tornado struck. In the weeks after the tornado, it was determined that the campus would need to be completely rebuilt.
Planning for a temporary school began four days after the May 22 tornado. School officials announced in June 2011 that juniors and seniors in the 201112 class would attend classes in a section of Northpark Mall in the renovated former Shopko location. Classes began as scheduled on August 17, 2011.
On May 20, 2012, President Barack Obama addressed the JHS graduating class's commencement ceremony, held almost one year to the day of the deadly tornado.
Temporary campus and facilities
From August 2011 to May 2014 the school was located in a renovated former Shopko store at Northpark Mall. The design of this temporary facility was awarded the
Council of Educational Facilities Planners International
A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or natio ...
's 2012 James D. MacConnell Award for excellence in school design.
On May 22, 2012, the groundbreaking ceremony was held marking the start of construction of the new permanent replacement school. Construction costs for the new 488,000 plus-square-foot facility designed by Corner Greer Associates of Joplin and the
Overland Park, Kansas
Overland Park ( ) is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Kansas. Located in Johnson County, Kansas, it is one of four principal cities in the Kansas City metropolitan area and the most populous suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. As o ...
firm DLR Group, which includes a state of the art vocational technical center, are expected to be $120 million.
After three years in temporary campuses as a result of the 2011 tornado, Joplin High School opened at 2104 Indiana Ave. on September 2, 2014.
Athletics and co-curricular activities
JHS athletic teams are nicknamed the Eagles and compete in the Central Ozark Conference, joining the conference in 2018 after previously being a member of the
Ozark Conference
The Ozark Conference is a high school athletic conference represented by 11 schools in the southwest portion of Missouri. As the name implies, all eleven schools are in the Ozarks region of the state and all are among the biggest in the region (on ...
.
JHS fields two competitive
show choirs
A show choir (originally known as a "swing choir") is a musical ensemble that combines choral singing with choreographed dance, often with an overarching theme. It is most relevant in the Midwestern United States and was popularized by the America ...
, the mixed-gender "Sound Dimension" and the all-female "Touch of Class". It previously fielded another mixed-gender group, "New Expressions", and another all-female group, "Glitz". The program also hosts an annual competition.
Noted alumni
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Robert Cummings
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings (June 9, 1910 – December 2, 1990) was an American film and television actor who appeared in roles in comedy films such as '' The Devil and Miss Jones'' (1941) and ''Princess O'Rourke'' (1943), and in ...
, actorWise and Wilderson 2000, p. 189.
*
Jacqueline Jakway
Jacqueline Halle Sinks Jakway (1928 - 25 March 2008) a professor of anatomy and cell biology.
Background
Jakway was born Jacqueline Halle Sinks in 1928 in Puerto Rico, later moving to Missouri. Jakway attended Joplin High School in 1946, followe ...
, neuroscientist
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Steve Luebber
Stephen Lee Luebber is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. Luebber pitched in all or part of five seasons in the majors between 1971 and 1981. He currently serves as pitching coach for the Quad Cities River Bandits, high-A farm team for the K ...
, baseball player
*
Jamie McMurray
James Christopher McMurray (born June 3, 1976), nicknamed Jamie Mac, is an American former professional stock car racing driver and currently an analyst for ''Fox NASCAR''. He raced in the NASCAR Cup Series on a full-time basis from 2003 to 2018 b ...