When an announcement went over the intercom shortly before noon Friday at South High School, for once it wasn’t reminding students to get to class. Instead, it let them know that first lady Michelle Obama would be visiting the school Monday.
The students’ disbelief and shock rapidly turned into screams of delight.
“Yay! Yay! That’s tight,” said Greg Jackson, 16, a junior who said he was sitting in Spanish class when he heard the news.
The buzz about the visit by the president’s wife was all over the school Friday and outside of it when parents started calling South principal Stephen Wera, who confirmed the news.
“It was the hardest announcement I ever had to make — the most famous woman in the world,” said Wera, well-aware that the school would go bonkers. “She chose us, and we’re not only representing South, but all DPS schools.”
Wera later told a group of 30 students who met in the second-floor library that they had been selected by department heads, teachers and the principal to meet the first lady.
Obama and a cadre of female Cabinet members, scientists, activists and movie stars will visit 11 metro schools Monday as part of the White House’s Women of Excellence leadership and mentoring initiative, rolled out earlier this year.
Students selected to meet with Obama have a homework assignment this weekend to fill out a questionnaire asking them about their interests, accomplishments and their plans for the future and what education questions they would like to ask the first lady.
Their answers were e-mailed to the White House.
“I knew she or someone from the White House was coming when I saw the Secret Service,” said Linda Jimenez, a senior and the student-body president.
Jimenez said she plans to talk to Obama about her school’s low Colorado Student Assessment Program scores.
“Students who do well get money for their schools, but when our school has English-language learners, they struggle, and it’s not fair to them or to the school,” Jimenez said.
South High School has not only struggled with proficiency on the standardized tests, but during the last school year, students staged a walkout and demanded that the school board remove the “Johnny Rebel” logos from inside the school, which had been in place for decades.
The DPS board agreed.
The school kept the Rebel name, but the Confederate soldier has been replaced with a griffin, a mythical monster with a body and hind legs of a lion and the head of an eagle.
“It was offensive, not only to black students but to all,” said A.J. Battle, 16, a junior who credits his older brother, A. Battle, and others who led the effort to get the controversial mascot removed.
On Friday, South High students’ minds were focused on the upcoming visit by Obama.
When Monday arrives, not only will Michael Streno, 15, a 10th-grade student and wrestler, be celebrating his 16th birthday, he’ll be shaking hands and posing questions to Michelle Obama.
Streno was surprised when principal Wera sent a note requesting that he stop by his office.
“My day has just stopped,” Streno said. “I look up to the president, and I admire the first lady. I can’t wait to tell my parents and friends.”
Annette Espinoza: 303-954-1655 or aespinoza@denverpost.com
