By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Former teachers and staff came back to Roosevelt Elementary School on Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the school’s 50th birthday.

The teachers and staff hugged, caught up and reminisced about their time at the school.

Pat Schumacher was a special education teacher at Roosevelt from 2005 to 2013. Schumaker’s sister was in one of the first classes to graduate Roosevelt, and Schumaker’s children also attended the school.

“You know this is a good school. It really is,” she said. “They are very cohesive. The staff is very supportive, especially when you are a special ed teacher, you tend to be a little more isolated from some of the classrooms, but we have some wonderful teachers who embrace the kids with special needs and made them feel a part of the classroom.”

Schumacher said she enjoyed seeing the students’ art displayed in the halls as she came in.

“There are some good memories, and I see the artwork from the art teacher and that reflects not just their ability to express themselves in art, but their ability to have free expression,” she said.

Donna Stehno, 80, was a school nurse for the Hays school district for 17 years, seven years of which was at Roosevelt in the early to mid-’80s.

“It was just a good time, great staff and great students,” she said. “It was a good time.”

She said she especially remembered potlucks in the teacher’s lounge.

Joanne Wasinger started teaching kindergarten at Roosevelt in 2006 and left two years ago.

She fondly remembered the students in her class getting eggs in the spring and hatching chicks.

“It was a spring thing. Every year, it was something that the kids looked forward to, we did it, and it was tradition here,” she said.

Former Principal Lee Keffer, who retired last school year, also attended the school reunion.

“It is nice to come back and see the staff members, and if kids are around it is nice to see them,” he said.

Paula Rice, current principal, said the students have been celebrating the decades the school has been open with decorations in their hallways, dress-up days and special activities that help them learn about the last 50 years of history.

Monday the fifth-grade celebrated the ’90s, Tuesday the fourth grade celebrated the ’80s, Wednesday the second and third grade celebrated the ’70s, today is kindergarten and first grade celebrating the ’60s, and on Friday all of the students and staff will wear 50th anniversary T-shirts that the home and school organization bought and participate in a sock hop. The sock hop will include an Elvis impersonator and donated ice cream from Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers.

“The staff has gone out their way to decorate to help the kids vision the era,” she said. “The fifth-grade hallway has a lot of ’90s out. The teachers brought with them pictures of them from the ’90s. They have put up TV shows from the ’90s and a lot of ’90s slang— the same with fourth-grade hall and the second- and third-grade hall.”

Rice has used slang from the different eras during the announcement, such as valley girl for the ’80s. The school is also playing some of the biggest hits from the decades of the day over the intercom as the students go to and from classes in the morning.

“Hays being that hometown that it is and still having that strong family feeling and hopefully always will,” she said, “there are so many past Roadrunners that may leave to go to college and come home, so their kids and their grandkids can be Roadrunners.

“I think it is important to understand why that legacy, why that tradition is so important. Is also important for them to understand what their contribution to society and what their contribution to school is. It is a two-way system. The school educates you, but you help the school educate everybody else.”

The students are also learning about history. The fourth-grade recently finished a novel about Martin Luther King Jr. Another class watched “Remember the Titans.”

“Not only did it take them back to the time period, but they were fully immersed in the conversations. They learn there were positive and not just struggles and there were struggles with all the positives. It is a good conservation for them and then they take that to their real life,” Rice said.