The Northwest Alabama Resource Conservation and Development Council (RC&D) recently announced grants awarded to Tharptown High School and Tharptown Elementary School totalling $20,000.
On Wednesday, March 26, representatives from RC&D including executive director Laurannne James, school officials, Paul Housel from Cosby Company, local and state elected officials including Representative Jamie Kiel and Senator Larry Stutts, local media, and others met at the school to discuss how the money was spent and to view improvements to the school.
One grant, awarded for the purpose of purchasing football equipment, was worth $15,000. With the money the Tharptown football team, led by head coach John Johnson, purchased new home and away uniforms, new helmets, and a tackling sled.
“This was the first two full sets of uniforms that’s been purchased in a long time. The biggest reason I sought the grant was because of the helmets. Helmets only have a 10-year life cycle, and we had about 50 and 30 of them were going out of cycle, so the biggest pressing issue was being able to purchase helmets,” Johnson said. “Then we had just enough money left over to buy the tackling sled.
“Being a rural school it’s difficult to raise funds to buy pretty much anything, so we’re very thankful for Representative Kiel and Senator Stutts and really everybody in this room because it wouldn’t have been possible without you,” Johnson told the assembled crowd.
Kiel, who attended Tharptown as a student for many years, said he was happy to help his former school.
“I love Tharptown,” he said. “I went here through ninth grade. I wish I could’ve went through high school, but there wasn’t a high school back then.
“It means a lot to me that the school’s here and that the school’s doing real well and that you guys”—addressing a group of THS football players in attendance—“are carrying on the Tharptown tradition.”
Up next the group walked over to view the Tharptown Elementary School gymnasium where $5,000 went to purchasing and installing acoustic or reverberation panels, which were placed on the four walls of the gym. The panels will absorb and reduce noise in what was previously a “really loud” environment.
“There was a lot of sound reverberation, so it was way too loud for safely having classes and ball games in (the gym),” Tharptown Elementary principal Molly King told the Franklin Free Press. “We needed some acoustic tiles to cut the sound reverberation down. This was the first step in that process and the next step will be to get some that are suspended (from the ceiling) to help cut the reverberation down more.”
King said the addition of the acoustic tiles are just the latest step in an ongoing project to renovate the gym. So far the school has been able to renovate the flooring and install new bleachers, as well.
“We’re in the process of updating it and bringing it back to life. This gym was built in the early 1960s and these last four years have been the first real attention it’s had,” she said. “It’s coming along and we’re going to get there.”
While the school attempts to reduce noise inside the gym, King said the renovations themselves will reverberate in the community. The gymnasium serves many roles and purposes for Tharptown. Putting in the money and effort to fix it up properly is certainly worth it, King added.
“It’s almost beyond words what it means to the school and the community,” she said. “Our PE classes are in here. We’ve got 547 students that are in here every day.
“Our community uses it, our youth basketball teams use it, the high school uses it when there are tournaments or they need another gym; we use it for school assemblies because we don’t have an auditorium,” King added. “This is where the community comes when they come to us. This is what they see—it’s the face of our school, right? So getting it in good shape and looking nice and making it the asset that the community needs, it’s invaluable to us as a school and it means the world to the community.
“We couldn’t do this without the support of the senator and our representative, RC&D, and the (Franklin County Schools) central office. It takes everyone working together for any of it to be successful and we’re very appreciative of them.”
