Arrowhead Middle School students in third building since start of new year

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV) – Kansas City Kansas Arrowhead Middle School students are in for more big changes this week.

Just days into their new school year, classes were moved to Homefield KC for a week; they’re now going to a whole new building.

As of August 25, the middle schoolers are hitting the books at Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC) Performing Arts building.

According to the middle school, there is some work going on at Homefield, forcing administrators to find a new temporary home for Arrowhead students.

This all comes after a fire in the school’s boiler room on August 18.

This isn’t the first time these students have experienced upheaval. A fire in November 2024 forced them to move classes to Homefield until January 2025.

On Monday, the district said clean up will take 4-6 weeks. A spokesperson said light levels of soot spread throughout the building in a fire earlier this month. That fire was in a closet near the kitchen, but investigators still don’t know the cause.

Practice for cross country, football, and volleyball begins Monday, August 25.

The school asks that Cross Country and football participants to ride the bus back to Arrowhead for practice. Those students will have locker room access at the school. Bus riders will have a 5:00 p.m. bus while car riders will need to be picked up at Arrowhead.

Volleyball participants are being asked to take a bus from KCKCC to Washington High School and practice in the small gym. After practice, volleyball students will return to Arrowhead for parent pick-up or the 5:00 p.m. bus.

The change left many parents frustrated and students shocked.

“Huh? how? Again?” said Shane Huddleston, a seventh-grader.

“This doesn’t make sense to me,” said Leslie Harris, a grandparent.

“When you’re having to move from one place to another place to another place it’s hard to get them on track,” said Calvin Dantzler, a parent.

Dantzler said he had to pick up his daughter from school early and said she wasn’t comfortable. He feels this much change could be disruptive to her learning.

“They’re learning some things, but it’s obviously not full capacity learning, because not only are the kids disrupted or the parents, the teachers too,” he said.

At the end of the unusual school day, a long line wrapped through the parking lot of the community college. KCTV5 News caught up with a few on pick-up duty. “It’s hard on the parents, so then the parents have the ask the grandparents, and some grandparents work, so where’s the strategy in this situation?,” asked Harris.

Some families believe it’s time for growth and change.

“It takes time to get those answers to be like, where can we go? What do we do? Is there funding to do something? What do we think about a new school, new facility? And that takes time.”

The district offered some of those answers late Monday, saying cleanup could take another 4-6 weeks.

Although it’s been a less-than-ideal way to start the school year, some students have a glass-half-full outlook on the change of scenery.

“I kind of got used to it after last year, it’s not really that bad. I mean as long as I’m learning I’m going to be okay,” said Huddleston.

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