Three school facilities receive names
With tears filling their eyes, members of James Enders' family listened to the approval of the final vote from the Wichita Public Schools Board of Education.
Enders' family was in attendance as the board named three new school facilities, including the James Enders Elementary School near 31st Street South and McLean.
"James Enders was a social studies and physical education teacher who first started at Roosevelt Junior High School and at Truesdell Middle School," said Jeff Davis, board member. "He was known by many as 'Coach.'"
Enders died in 2010.
"He continued - up until the day he died - to keep up with a lot of his students," said Evann Enders, his great-granddaughter. "At his funeral, a lot of the students he taught came and said how grateful they were to have met him."
He spent years coaching tennis at South High. Evann said tennis "was his life," and he continued to play until he became too ill.
"The naming committee feels that his legacy of being a positive influence on hundreds of young people - including myself - for leading an example in the classroom and the community, that the new south elementary school be named James Enders Elementary School," Davis said.
The board also approved naming a building in the 1800 block of North Chautauqua the Chester I. Lewis Academic Learning Center. The facility is the former location of the Northeast Magnet High School. It is also the new location of the Metro-Boulevard Alternative High School.
"Lewis was a state and national leader in the civil rights movement," said Connie Dietz, board member. "He helped initiate the Dockum Drug Store sit-in, and as an attorney, he helped with the integration of Wichita Public Schools."
A new southeast K-8 school will be called the Christa McAuliffe Academy.
McAuliffe was a high school teacher from New Hampshire who beat out more than 11,000 applicants in NASA's Teacher in Space program.
She was selected to ride aboard the space shuttle Challenger. However, McAuliffe died with all the other crew members when the shuttled exploded after launch in 1986.
"She was very excited to be the first teacher in space, saying 'she was a history teacher making history,'" Dietz said.
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