On Wednesday, March 30, 2022, an unforgettable thing happened when Warren High School caught on fire. The community was devastated. Warren has always been a town that loves their school district and the whole community was left wondering what the next step was.
The damage caused by the fire, smoke, and water was so severe that it left the building in an unusable state. Students attended classes in the SEACBEC building for the remainder of the school year. Since then, students and faculty have been doing what they can to make classes as normal as possible. Part of that process included students attending classes in portable buildings from August 2022 to May 2023.
Fast-forward to the 2023/2024 school year when Warren High School principal Tiffany Gathen, forwarded Payton Reep, the E.A.S.T. teacher, an email about a contest involving Josten’s where the winner could walk away with the grand prize of $150,000 to go towards an Epic School Revamp. Gathen received an email about the contest and then forwarded the email to Reep.
“This was a WHS project where I asked for some E.A.S.T. students to make the video and then I submitted the data,” Gathen said.
When Reep was asked if she and her students would help, she gladly agreed.
“When Ms. Gathen forwarded the contest email to me and asked if E.A.S.T. would be interested in doing it, we said of course,” Reep said.
Reep spent about a week and a half explaining to students what branding, identity, and school culture means. They then looked at some of the areas that the school could improve on. The students scheduled and conducted all of their interviews, which also took about a week. Once the video was edited and put together, the students started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The edited video was then lost along with some of the recorded interviews. But the students didn’t give up. They pushed through and were able to get another video together in about a week.
“I was very excited, and I felt like we won when we finished the video,” Reep said.
She felt like that was the winning point for her.
On December 20, 2023, Reep found out that Warren High School had won the contest, but she couldn’t exactly share the exciting news with family and friends. An assembly that was disguised as a normal pep assembly was going to be held on January 9, 2024.
“I had to sit on that secret,” Reep said.
It was there that the team from Josten’s revealed to the school and members of the community that Warren High School had indeed won the contest.
During the assembly, Alyson Araque who is the Vice President of Merchandising and Creative for Josten’s said a few words before the announcement was made.
“We looked for a school with heart and spirit,” Araque said.
She also said that’s exactly what they saw when they looked at the Warren school district.
After the announcement, John Jenson who is the director of Josten’s Schoolmark, interviewed a few other people including Joel Tolfree, who is a member of the school board and Warren City Council. Tolfree said that he thought the state would let Warren build a new school, but unfortunately, that had not happened.
“Like we always do, we took lemons and made lemonade, and God sent us you,” Tolfree said.
Warren High School’s new look will be revealed in August at the beginning of the 2024/2025 school year.
