It is the building in which I signed my first teaching contract: the Administration Building for Oklahoma City Public Schools. I received professional development there, I delivered professional development there, and it was there, in that old building, that my principal (the late Gary Blevins) was when the Murrah Federal Building was attacked by Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995.
| He couldn't get out of the downtown area for quite some time on that day, and he couldn't immediately contact the school by phone due to the phone lines being overwhelmed in the city - but also due to the fact that all of the principals in the district were trying to contact their own schools at the same time. Gary told me that they though someone was attacking them. I remember addressing the school board, one evening, in that building. I was much younger then, having just started teaching less that five years earlier, and I was trying to speak up concerning a textbook company's efforts to go around the district's adoption process to make a huge sale. Not only were the textbooks unattractive and ineffective for elementary students, the company was unethical in their sales methods, and I wanted the school board to understand that fact. Even so, they granted a limited adoption to the company. As we might see in this video about the administration building's fate, it looks like the school board, even with changing membership through the years, still makes questionable decisions with taxpayer money. | I don't know anything about the history of the building at 900 N. Klein. I don't know if any history was ever made there - I'm sure many things came through that building that are important - but were any of those things worthy of saying it is a historical building. Even if it might be an unpopular opinion among history buffs, I contend that just because something is old doesn't make it historic. Otherwise, it could be that it's just an eyesore and a blight to the neighborhood. It's a shame that something can't be done closer to the time of closing rather than people crying about it years later. |
Still, it is a piece of my own past - another piece of fading personal memories of past experiences that brought me to the place I am now.
