Inside Stanly: Schools

Yesterday afternoon, Helen Nance sat in the comfort of her air-conditioned Chevy Impala, gazing across the barren ground to a 55,000 sq.-ft., gray-stone building that is quickly taking shape. Outside, the August heat wave, with all its mugginess, continued to make life less than ideal; but no one could tell Helen Nance that… her dream campus is too close to reality.
The walls and roof of the new Gray Stone Day School are in place, and if all goes as expected, Nance will be opening the doors to this new school facility toward the end of January 2011. To say she is excited is definitely downplaying the moment, for the lady is totally ecstatic, even if its 100 degrees and 95 percent humidity outside.
“There is a lot of activity going on at the site and the road is in the process of being built,” said Nance, Gray Stone Day Chief Administrative Officer. When finished, the road will completely encircle the building to give easy access to various areas of the building, which is located behind Pfeiffer University’s Mercer Gym.
Once completed, Gray Stone Day will have its own gym for the first time. The gym will be college size rather than high school size, so the possibility exist that Pfeiffer could also use the gym. A soccer field will be constructed in front and to the west of the main entrance. For the immediate future, Gray Stone Day will continue to use other venues for their baseball and tennis programs.
While Nance is a great lover of high school football, she said there are no plans for football at Gray Stone Day anytime soon.
Despite limited facilities and low student enrollments, athletic success has paralleled the academic success of the school. Just last year, Gray Stone Day finished fifth in the race for the 1A Wachovia Cup, which is presented to the school in each classification with the best overall athletic program.
There are other firsts that will be coming with the new school building in addition to the gym and soccer field, including wireless connectivity to the Internet throughout the entire building.
“Students will able to use school computers on their own, sit anywhere and do their work,” she said. “I can visualize them sitting outside, enjoying the spring weather and doing their school work on their computers.”
Another first will be a school commons where Nance said students can not only congregate during the normal day, but also hold fundraisers, dances and other events.
“We hope to hold the prom in the Commons next spring,” Nance said.
Tomorrow, Gray Stone Day begins its ninth year with 323 students, including a whopping 113 freshmen. From its earliest days to Thursday’s opening day, home has been the Harris Building on the Pfeiffer University campus. But come January, when the new facility becomes home, Nance’s goal will to reach 400 in student enrollment and stay there.
“Our charter allows for 400 students, but by state law, we could grow 10 percent above that every year if we so desired,” Nance said. “But our philosophy is that a smaller high school is a better high school, so we’ll get to around 400 students and stay there.”
That “better high school” is something that Gray Stone has accomplished in its first eight years, and given last year’s testing scores, the school is only getting better. Its 97.9 proficiency rating on end-of-grade test scores attests to that fact. Throw into the academic mix nearly $2 million in scholarship funds for the Class of 2010’s 62 graduates and one gets a sense of what Gray Stone Day is all about.
“We’re strictly a college prep school. That’s been our mission from the start,” Nance said. “To our way of thinking, you decide what you’re going and to do and do it.”
The record speaks volumes, and with January and a new state-of-the-art facility just five months away, things have never looked brighter for Gray Stone Day.