The Joel E. Barber C-5 School District is digitizing its eighth-grade class murals painted inside its school before painting over the physical versions on the walls, Superintendent Rachelle Jennings said last Thursday.
The class murals are a tradition at Joel E. Barber which Jennings said left the graduating class’s mark behind when they left the kindergarten through eighth grade for high school, but the district had difficulty maintaining their quality as they aged and finding space for them, and the building has and continues to change.
Jennings said the district was trying to refresh the building while not losing the special tradition.
Her class mural, which she pointed out during the Record’s visit, was one of the murals which had deteriorated. Cleaning the murals, she said, takes the paint off.
The oldest remaining mural is the class of 1983 and sits in what once was the cafeteria but was now a classroom, according to Jennings. Other examples of the changes to the building include differences in water fountain height that now cover part of murals.
The district is also emodeling its hallways with new coats of paint, new bulletin boards, and new designs. To complete the project, the district will have to paint over the murals.
The district’s solution is to digitize the class murals and make them available for visitors to examine.
The timeline for the remodeling is undefined, as Jennings said the district has to look at the building in sections, and the timeline will also depend on when the district's custodial team can make time for projects like that. However, Jennings said it was coming.
The digital versions of the mural should be available to view on the TV across from the concession stand inside the building, which Jennings said also houses class composites (a new feature this school year).
The plan, Jennings said, was for community members to visit both the physical and digital versions of the murals at the Parent Teacher Organization Carnival on April 17.
During COVID-19, Jennings said the district switched from wall murals to murals on boards.
The 2024-2025 mural board was on display inside the building at the time of writing, and Jennings said the 2025-2026 class board should be up before the students leave this year. She said the district has also taken mural boards to the Cowan Civic Center to display at eighth grade graduation.
The murals themselves have changed over the years, with Jennings noting how there were many past class murals that had songs that went with their themes.
The murals these days had a greater variety of content, and Jennings said there was talk of doing a digital mural.
“We don’t want to delete the history, we want to preserve it and then let our new eighth grade classes kind of figure out what does the future look like for them,” she said. “Because it doesn’t have to be what it’s always been.”
For more news, see Wednesday's LCR.
