When roughly 500 middle schoolers walk through the South Fork Junior High doors Thursday morning, they will get to call themselves something few students can: part of a school’s inaugural class.
The first day of classes in Livingston Parish marks the official opening of South Fork, a $22 million, 80,000-square-foot campus that gives Walker’s middle school students a permanent home — complete with a new name, a new mascot and a new motto.
“The students are going to be amazed at the changes in not just the facility, but the culture, the level of pride and community engagement,” Principal Jeffrey Watts said.
The campus features a new gymnasium and modern classrooms; outlets run throughout the building, and water fountains sit at nearly every corner. Among the marquee additions is a dedicated room for computer science, engineering and STEM projects, called the maker space. In the lab-style space, students will assemble microchips, build Rube Goldberg chain reaction machines, work with 3D printers and even dissect sheep brains…