Collierville seniors look forward as new era looms
Smiling and reminiscing about their high school experience on the eve of their graduation, Collierville High School seniors Tony Sims and Claire Thomas shared their advice for the first students who are headed to the town’s new high school this fall. Get involved, they agree. “Find the area that you want to get into ... and strive to do your best, and more than likely at the end of high school that will be the area where you make your most memories,” Sims said.
Sims, 18, is the senior class president and will attend Washington University in St. Louis to study business. He’s also looking at a double major with politics. Thomas is 17 and interested in law and medicine. She loves speech and debate and is attending the University of Alabama-Birmingham.
Both are anchors of the student television station, and they are among the students in the last graduating class from the Collierville High School building on Byhalia Road. Collierville students will move for the upcoming school year to a new multimillion dollar facility.
“Find your niche,” Thomas advised for the next class. “Something that you’re passionate about and that you can pursue in your extra time so you’re not always focusing on homework and you’re not stressed about that math quiz you have tomorrow. So you have something else that you like to do and you’re surrounded by people who like to do it with you.”
School leaders were wowed during a tour last year of the new $94 million high school on more than 150 acres on East Shelby Drive and Sycamore Road. It features expansive gymnasiums, a technology center, a 1,000-seat auditorium, a space for robotics, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) wing, a greenhouse, a wing for welding, advance manufacturing and agricultural education classes, and a juice bar, among many other amenities.
The new high school campus also includes a full commercial kitchen for students to use as a classroom setting, principal Chip Blanchard said. Collierville is working with the University of Memphis on a culinary program that utilizes the kitchen and a dining area that can accommodate about 30 people.
“For kids interested in culinary, or hospitality and tourism, getting that experience in a high school setting is phenomenal,” Blanchard said. “Plus, getting college credit, they can go to Memphis and be much further with completing that degree work.”
Schilling Farms Middle School students will move into the existing high school building on Byhalia, and the school will be called West Collierville Middle.
Blanchard said he encourages everyone to be good stewards in taking care of the new high school facility.
“We’re so excited and thankful for our community and the support of the school system, and the new facility that we’re moving into is just more than I think any of us could ask for and dream for,” Blanchard said.
“The new kids are going to love it,” Sims said. “They’re going to love every single bit of it.”