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Bulletin Board -
WEHS School Info
Updated
08/01/2008 |
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This page is
for articles, stories or other info about West End High School. Please
email us if you have something to share.
WEST END SCHOOL CLOSING
Two articles about the closing of
West End High School and West End Online:
Kathy Kemp, April 6, 2008 -
Birmingham News
column
Ann Ruisi, May 18, 2008 -
Birmingham News article
Read about WEHS school closing ceremony to be held June 7th,
2008.
School Closing Ceremony
School Closing
Flyer
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Spivey's
Hobby Store Up In Flames
Toriane Norris,
News Staff Writer - June, 2005
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Mr. Spivey passed
away 11/06. For more about Mr. Spivey,
click here.
Herman Spivey sat
in a West End alley Thursday afternoon, hands on his silver hair, and
watched his life's work go up in smoke.
"You just saw my whole life
burn up right there," the 78-year-old Spivey said. "I don't even have any
insurance."
 A two-alarm fire that
billowed smoke high into the air destroyed Spivey Hobby, Toys and Gifts. The
store was at 13th Street and Tuscaloosa Avenue and had drawn generations of
customers who had come to Spivey to find model airplanes, toy soldiers and
science projects. Six engines, two
ladder trucks and two rescue trucks were called to scene.
"It's the death of a
landmark," said Capt. C.W. Mardis, spokesman for the Birmingham Fire
Department. "I used to come to this store as a kid."
Spivey, his wife, an
employee and five others were inside when the fire started in the back of
the store at 3:22 p.m.
A customer smelled smoke.
The customer and Spivey took an extinguisher to the back to investigate.
When they arrived they found a small fire, and Spivey said they tried to put
it out. "I could have put it out, but I couldn't put it out because I
couldn't walk," said Spivey, who uses a scooter to get around.
 Soon the entire structure
was engulfed in flames. The fire also destroyed Spivey's blue van, which was
parked in front of the store.
Spivey said the fire was
probably electrical, but Mardis said the department had not pinpointed the
cause.
Spivey said the insurance
company, which he could not name, had stopped insuring the building May 20.
He said the company told him the building, built about 1932 and remodeled by
Spivey in 1947 and 1989, was too old.
"It wasn't too old," Spivey
said. "They just didn't want the exposure."
Residents of West End sat
and watched the 1303 Tuscaloosa Ave. store burn.
"It's very sad to see a
building like this go because we have no other way to buy the toy models,"
West End resident Shalandia Nelson said. "I have bought toy airplanes out of
here for my kids. When I was a little girl my mom bought stuff for me out of
there. Where else can you go now and buy a lot of this stuff?" |
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West End High Still A Great School
Richard W. Bartley, Sr - Class of '62 |
When I talked to a friend recently and mentioned that I attended West End High
School, he shared a bit of news I'd like to share with you. A friend of his is involved
in the Birmingham school system and had experienced nothing but bad
attitudes and bad behavior in area schools. During a visit to WEHS, he
was pleasantly surprised to find the school very clean and students with
great attitudes and behavior. He could not believe that a school could have
such a fine environment as this. So when you visit the school this year,
look around and be very proud to have been a part of a legacy continued
today. |
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Fire
at West End High School |
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A two-alarm fire broke out in the basement of West End
High School at 10:45am, Friday January 24th, 2003. It caused smoke damage to
the school's other two floors and about 20% of the b building.
Firefighters had the fire under control within 15 minutes. Students
were evacuated to the nearby Lee Elementary School gymnasium, then were
dismissed for the day. No one was injured. An emergency cleaning
service worked through the weekend and class resumed Monday morning.
Birmingham Fire Capt. C.W. Mardis released preliminary findings Monday that
show Friday's fire at West End High School was intentionally set. Mardis
would not elaborate on the findings and did not say if investigators have
questioned a suspect or if an arrest was made. "What we're going to do
right now is continue our interviews with students and with employees, the
principal, etc., and piece together who had access to that particular area
and try to determine if the fire was intentionally set," Mardis said.
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King's Name OK'd for School
Carla Crowder, News Staff
Writer -
Nov, 2001 |
The Birmingham school board voted Tuesday to name a planned school the
Martin Luther King, Jr. High School for Business, Law and Justice. It
is the first Alabama high school to be named for the civil rights leader.
"I think it's overdue," said Wyatt T. Walker of New York, who was
King's chief of staff from 1960 to 1964. "I think that's appropriate,
and it gives evidence that Martin Luther King Jr. was above all else a great
American patriot."
The $46 million school, to be built in southwest Birmingham, would combine
Wenonah and West End high schools. It would have about 1,800 students
and is expected to open in fall, 2003.
The board also voted to name the mock courtroom planned for the school after
former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.
The decision to name the school for King came on a 3-1 vote with board
member Virginia Volker opposing it. Board member Mary Moore was out of
the room, but voted against the name at a committee meeting earlier Tuesday.
Both dissenters, frequent critics of School Superintendent Johnny Brown,
were concerned about forging ahead with a name for the school when there is
controversy about merging Wenonah and West End. A vocal group of
neighborhood leaders has protested a combined school fearing it would result
in the old schools becoming boarded-up eyesores. |
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Big, New West End School
Opposed
Carla Crowder, News Staff
Writer -
Sept, 2001 |
Birmingham's school administration wants to build a modern $47 million
school to replace West End and Wenonah high schools.
On Monday, West End residents gathered before school officials with this
message: Thanks, but no thanks.
The proposed combined school is part of the system's plan to replace small,
aging buildings with new ones that rival the sleek, high-tech facilities
sprouting in some suburbs.
But community activists say their neighborhoods would shrivel without local
schools. They also fear "mega-schools." Some research has shown that
struggling students fall by the wayside in large, impersonal institutions,
said Nell Allen, president of the Oakwood Place Neighborhood Association,
who is trying to preserve West End High.
She said she pulled together 100 studies trying to convince the school board
not to build a new school with more than 900 students.
"We're about to have a boarded-up school with the promise of a community
center that never happens," Mrs. Allen told about 50 school officials,
neighborhood leaders, planners and architects gathered Monday night.
She handed school officials a proposal to use $30 million to refurbish the
old school.
The proposed site for the new school is in the Spaulding-Ishkooda area in
the Oxmoor Valley. System officials say it would rival Birmingham's showcase
school, the $47.5 million Carver High School.
To accept less would allow the unfair traditions of unequal facilities for
black and white students to continue, said one board member.
"We always make do," said Board President Annie Davis, who supports
Superintendent Johnny Brown's plan for new schools. "You've inherited these
old dilapidated buildings, and now you want to cling to them."
Board member Mary Moore, who opposes the new building, said this was another
sad, Birmingham example of ruining historic architecture.
"New buildings are not always the solution to everything," Ms. Moore said |
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Neighborhood Leaders
Remain
Opposed
To Plans To Close School
Anne Ruisi, News
Staff Writer -
May, 2001 |
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West End community leaders and residents
say they will continue to oppose city school system plans to close West End
High School after a new southwest high school is built in 2003.
"If you close our school, you've taken all of our youth out," said Nell
Allen, president of the Oakwood Place Neighborhood, after an hour-long
recent meeting with Birmingham Superintendent Johnny E. Brown.
The new southwest area high school is planned to replace aging West End and
Wenonah high schools. While a location hasn't been chosen, school
officials have looked at several sites, including the Spaulding-Ishkooda
sections of the Oxmoor Valley.
The residents told Brown that while they want students to have the best
education possible, they do not want the 76 year old high school to close.
"If we close West End, we will have nothing else," Mrs. Allen said.
"We'll be looking at a boarded up building.
Mrs. Allen said that if school officials do close West End, residents want
the structure to be used for some kind of educational purpose, such as a
medical curriculum that could be developed with nearby Princeton Baptist
Medical Center. They said they don't want it used for a halfway house,
drug recovery center or anything else residents deem undesirable.
"We want to protect the integrity of our neighborhood," Mrs. Allen said.
Brown listened to residents' concerns, but said the West End High School
building isn't suitable for learning in 2001. The building could be
used, but it is old and outdated, and doesn't have the high tech amenities
and advantages of the newest schools, such as the city's new Carver High or
Hoover's Spain Park campus.
"Our kids are smart. Let's give them the same playing field as other
kids have," Brown said.
The new Carver, for example, includes 75 classrooms, chemistry labs, an
outdoor ecology lab, state of the art science labs and multimedia center.
About 650 personal computers, all wired for the Internet, fill classrooms,
labs and the school's library.
A second new high school, to replace Jackson-Olin and Ensley high schools,
will be built before the new southwest high school.
The West End leaders also want to change the name of Robert E. Lee
Elementary School, named for the Confederate general, to honor Martin Luther
King Jr.
Committees are being formed to discuss names for planned new schools, such
as the new eastern area middle school, and another can be formed to discuss
a name change for Lee, Brown said. |
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