CAAnceled: Students in the CAA struggle to find alternate ways to continue education after school closure

The Center for Academic Achievement, a Shawnee Mission School District building where students can study speciality skills, closed for the semester on March 17. The closing followed the mandate announced by Governor Laura Kelly for all public schools to close. 

The CAA holds five student programs — Medical Health Science, Biotechnology, Culinary Arts & Hospitality and Engineering — all of which will be halted due to the closure. This will impact research and hands-on learning experience, including creating video games and conducting cancer research.

According to CAA principal Ryan Flurry, district staff and teachers are allowed in the building from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. in groups of no more than 10. The staff can sign up online, which Flurry manages.

In addition to the CAA, the Career and Technical Campus, the SMSD building that offers more emergent speciality programs, closed for the rest of the year as well — resulting in the closure of the Fire Science, Law Enforcement and Emergency Medical Service signature programs. 

According to junior Morghan Golloher, who is involved in the Biotechnology signature program, the programs will continue online, but won’t offer the same hands-on learning that the CAA provided. The programs won’t have full equipment, such as labs for Biotech or virtual reality for Game Design, so the same experience can’t be offered at home.

“It’s basically like an end to the school year for these specialized programs,” Golloher said. “Of course teachers can assign things to add to third quarter, but it’s not the same as having that in class interaction that only a person who’s taking that class would understand.”

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Golloher splits her time between the CAA and a research lab at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Her research project there, which involved modifying breast cancer cells in mice to prevent muscle from wasting away into fat, closed down along with the CAA. 

Every student involved in research at the CAA will not be able to finish their projects out this semester. While they can enter online competitions, they can’t collect any more data or enter their lab — leaving their projects unfinished. 

“Being a junior and knowing that your senior friends don’t get to graduate with their friends and finish out their research that they’ve worked so tirelessly for is heartbreaking,” Golloher said. “Having it closed was kind of like a slap in the face.”

Senior Sophie Sun, who was involved in the medical science program her junior year before moving to the Biotechnology program this year, felt defeated. She won’t be able to complete her research project, meaning she can’t enter it into contests. 

Sun spent over half of her day at her lab, located in the KU Medical Lab. Sun would begin  working on standard procedures such as protein analysis and pipetting at 12p.m. and work until 4 p.m. each day. According to Sun, the amount of time she spent there was what made the closure of the CAA so heartbreaking. 

“I don’t get to have graduation and prom and all that stuff,” Sun said. “But with the CAA, not being able to have that quarter doesn’t wrap up the class that’s half of our school day, leaving it as an unfinished project. It’s just kind of there now.” 

For Sun, a huge disappointment about not going back to school was not being able to see her friends from other schools in her program. She’s been with them for two hours of her school day for a whole year.

While Sun and her friends still do check-ins through Zoom with their class and FaceTime, Sun feels that it’s not the same as the in-person interaction that she has with them every day — checking in on their projects and talking about the differences between their schools.  

“It doesn’t feel as personal,” Sun said. “When it’s through a camera, social interaction seems fake almost even thought you’re talking with them in real time.”

Sydney Newton | The Harbinger Online

Senior Alexa Adams, who is in Animation and Game Design 2, had a month’s worth of files on the computers at the CAA for the video game she was designing. Due to the closure, Adams is unable to access them. Adams feels she was lucky to have backed it up a month ago and not lost the entirety of her work. 

Where Adams only lost a month of files, most students lost all the files for their game — including the art and coding that they had spent the entire semester creating. And if the students don’t have a PC at home like Adams, they aren’t able to continue designing it at all. Many students, including Adams, plan to make gaming their career — part of why the closure and loss of files was so upsetting. 

“I know for a few of them it’s their passion project,” Adams said. “I know that they’d probably be extremely upset that they lost three months of work because for a majority of kids in that program that’s what they are wanting to do as a career. This is kind of a big stepping stone and losing that might be a little rough.”

Through the closure, all the students involved in signature programs are trying to remain hopeful and do as much work as they can from home. 

“This isn’t something that anyone could prepare for,” Golloher said. “We’re trying to go through the motions and have the most successful year with what we’ve been dealt.