Springfield Leader and Press from Springfield, Missouri • 43

T- -A' I A xv I 1 4 II f.l I shoeless young ladv above and her schoolmates pay more attention to the photographer than to teacher in this picture taken in one of Nixa's two first grade rooms in the new J200.000 elementary unit just opened. The teacher is Mrs. Grace McDonald, a veteran of 13 years in the Nixa system. Nixa's 46 first graders A are housed in. adjacent rooms (each with its own restroom) in a D3 wing away from other grade school classes.

They have their own Springfield, October 2, 1960 outside entrances, patios and a playground. COriSOLIDAYuU.USTruCT-!10,:2r. Vocational agriculture students J. E. Scroggins llelt) and Albert Powell (on tractor) help seed the lawn outside.

Nixa's ultra-modern elementary school building. The $200,000 structure has 10 classrooms, an all-purpose room and cafeteria and offices. Well-lighted and roomy, it's considered the community's show-place. The building houses 275 students in the first grades; is about a half-mile northeast of the junior-senior high school campus. What Do You Do When Population Doubles? Sell)! Sosnrirag NEIGHBORING NIXA.

one of Greater Springfield's burgeoning bedrooms, hits the headlines once a year with its now-famous "Sucker Day" a spring day set aside for the whole town to close up shop and go fishing. But thafs only 6nce a year. Despite the wide publicity Sucker Day draws, ask most residents of Nixa (or1 Nixie, as a good many folks call it what the Christian, County community's main attraction, its pride and joy, is and the answer will be close to unanimous. It's the school system, not unique but certainly not ordinary. -Although the physical plant is not unlike scores of others (a necessary marriage of the old, the remodeled and the new), the Nixa system is considered by several educators as- one of the state's outstanding small schools.

THERE IS evidence to bear out that feeling in awards won by its music department, its vocational agriculture, snorts and win' nri ts 'n-ti! lH- hi feln I I science programs, all of which have gained state-wide recogni- i ttn in rfmanf vonrc mm LJ LJL rip LJ.U mi i 'n-imiyirimvi mi nwii Framed by the entrance to the junior-senior high school building (above) are Supt. George Espy and Principal Frank Rotrock. Both are former Springfieldians, Fspy has headed the Nixa-school system for the past seven years; Rotrock has been there six. A former music teacher at Rogersville, Mt. Vernon and Lebanon, Espy was superintendent at Hartville for four years before going to Nixa.

His brother, Charles, is assistant principal at Springfield's Central High. The music department, under the direction of Bill Bodanske, captured more top ratings than any other small Missouri high school in competition last year. The year before, the Nixa basketball team placed second in the Class state tournament. The vocational agriculture department is considered particularly out-? standing, having qualified four different teams for state contests in 1960. And last spring, a Nixa senior, Larry Owen, now a freshman at Drury College, won a gold 'and silver medal award and an Air Force special award for his lunar base exhibit in the National Science' Fair.

BUT RlED George Espy, a native Springfieldian who has been Nixa's superintendent for the past seven years, is careful not to single out one department as the school's "best." "I've just always been proud of our well-rounded program," explains "and of the townspeople in providing the physical I plant." Only 10 miles south of Springfield on U.S. 160, Nixa has This is Mrs. Janet Rawlings and her "brood" 22 o( the 23 youngsters in ber first grade room. They're draped all over a jungle gym in the separate playground for first-graders to the rear of the new elementary unit. inn nnn 'mmmMml II I JI.WIIMW.

'fAl. IVv experienced a remarkable population growth of about 80 percent in the past decade. It's school census has almost doubled, moving from a total enrollment of only 300 when Espy took over to more than 525 this month. To meet the flood of new students, many of them children of persons working in Springfield, patrons in the school district (Christian County R-2 passed a $200,000 bond issue by more than 3-to-l margin in March, 1359, to build a new elementary unit. HIS the new building, a showplace of the community, was opened on a tract in the northeast part of town.

Its 10 classrooms, plus an all-purpose room, cafeteria ajhd offices, house 275 students in grades one through six. The faculty in the new unit and at the junior-senior high school across town totals 23 persons. The high school now offers 40 units of instruction, compared to, just 25 when Espy arrived on the scene. As most school patrons know, you have to pay for what you get and the improvements at Nixa havecpst money The school levy there is $2.75, highest in Christian County, and Espy notes that the bonded indebtedness is now at capacity under present, state law. So it's possible, unless a further flood of residents raises the district's evaluation a great deal, that future major improvements may be several years in coming.

Members of the Nixa board of education are President Freman Glenn, a fjeldman for the Carnation Plant there; Dr. Victor Wood, a dentist; Harold McLean, a super market owner; Wilbent Moore, a farmer; Max White, a Springfield Kraft Foods employe; and Harry Young, a farmer. i Lit 'f-r 3 rmirJa I jt-T mi 1-1 Wi-Wi Eamples of what some educators consider the finest small school departments of their kind in the state are shown in the pictures above and below. Music teacher BiU Bodanske (above)' sends his boys' glee club through its paces, with the help of accompanist Linda Scroggins (left). Nixa led Missouri small schools in the number of ratings in state competitipn last year.

Below, vo-ag instructor (Gerald Page, ileft)- gives students JVilliamHaworth, Gene Asher and Steve Hedgepeth tips how to string fencing on a gate. The vo-ag department has scored extremely well in state contests over, the past several years. i.iiniiii r', One unique feature of the Nixa High School curriculum In thii language laboratory series of booths la which students monitor Vtaprd" language lessons, tnea speak Into the microphones to hear their own pronunciation. In Spanish class are (seated) Ronnie Middleton and Martha Hendricksoo, with Gary Murray, teacher Mrs. Bill Bodanske and I-aura Kay F.spy in the background.

i I. -f I i. "III hi Sj7' It's a principal's prerogative to get first taste of the noon meal and Nixa elementary principal John Thomas, former SMS football player, is doing Just that (above) In the sparkling new kltchei and cafeteria. Looking on are Mrs. Florence Ball (center) and Mrs.

Ethel Darr. At elementary musk supervisor Mrs. Irene Young has a session with a group of second and third graders in the new all purpose room. the TV set at right fifth and sixth graders monitor the television Classroom coure offered In the Springfield public school system each morning. ki -2 -ie--U f-.