Less than a month away from welcoming students back to its hallways, Dallas’ South Oak Cliff High School buzzed with activity Thursday morning as Superintendent Michael Hinojosa gave a tour to the media.

Down every corridor of the 68-year-old campus, construction workers were putting the final touches on the two-year project as Hinojosa walked and talked, pointing out some of the highlights from the $52 million renovation — an “extreme makeover,” he called it.

The renovation wasn’t an easy process, but not because of rampant overruns or unforeseen hurdles.

At several stops along a five-year journey, the district and outspoken members of the community disagreed about the scope of the project and the type and quality of renovation the school needed.

With declining conditions at the campus — including roof issues, water damage, pest control, heating and cooling problems and a gas leak — many in the community asked for a completely rebuilt high school, something that district administration and the board of trustees refused to grant.

This friction led to student walkouts, lawsuits and a trustee election that hinged largely on the school’s condition.

On Thursday, however, most of that enmity was gone.

While there are still a few points of contention, both sides — including Hinojosa — are thrilled about the prospects at the refurbished campus. The school now features wide-open corridors, broad expanses of glass opening out into a remodeled courtyard, a new facade and a sparkling competition gym and weight room.

The end product, Hinojosa said, speaks for itself.

“We’re comfortable with where we are at,” he said.

The school’s principal, Willie Johnson, said students could be amazed by the resources that would soon be available at his campus.

Teachers will get a tour of their new digs Friday. They’ll get to move in properly on Jan. 6 — a staff development day for the district. Students will arrive back from holiday the following day.

An official ribbon cutting for the school will be on Jan. 11.

Gains amid challenges

In his third year as the school’s principal, Johnson shepherded a difficult logistical challenge during construction.

Instead of moving to portables on the school’s existing footprint, or attending classes in place while parts of the building were undergoing construction, the school was completely relocated to a nearby DISD alternative campus, Village Fair, beginning in January 2018.

The district tried to make it like home, spending over $2 million to renovate Village Fair to accommodate South Oak Cliff’s 1,100 students, building a band hall, science labs, a small practice gym and a dance studio for the school’s programs.

Even so, the principal said, the move was tough.

The football team practiced at five far-flung fields and stadiums, the school’s storied basketball programs used three different gyms, and students participating in many extracurricular activities often wouldn’t get bused back to South Oak Cliff until 9 p.m. or later.

Delays also pushed back the school’s reopening from August 2019 to January 2020.

Despite those challenges, the school has thrived. When Johnson came to the school, it was teetering on the state’s failing list. Yet, for the past two years, the high school has been rated as a “C” by the Texas Education Agency, receiving recognition from the state in three categories this year.

“Most students in the district have somewhere they can call home,” Willie Johnson said. “We’ve been working in transition. ... This is bigger than any particular resource. It’s students getting stable, for lack of a better word.

“Now we can come home, and there’s no limit to what we can do.”

Hinojosa said it was symbolically huge to have updated facilities in southern Dallas, where communities don’t “get the treatment” that they should.

Having new or updated buildings would also help draw — or keep — students in Dallas ISD, he said, because of the chasm between the quality of facilities in Lancaster or DeSoto.

“This is exactly what affects market share,” Hinojosa said.

Willie Johnson said he’s seen that first hand this year. Projected at 963 students at the start of the school year, enrollment was 1,322 in early September as students came back anticipating moving back into the campus.

Fighting for quality

All the school’s improvements, however, did not come without a struggle.

Maxie Johnson, a former South Oak Cliff PTA president who won election to DISD’s board of trustees in May thanks in part to his advocacy for the high school, called the renovation a “major equity battle.”

“When I took over as trustee, I was looking at the buildings and what kids needed to be successful,” he said. “I promised the community three things: safe learning environments, equitable resources and quality programs, and true transparency.

“The only thing I wanted to do was to make sure that the buildings weren’t a distraction to kids’ learning.”

When a $1.6 billion bond package was passed in 2015, the district — guided by a facilities task force and a 2-year-old report by the engineering and construction firm Parsons — initially allocated $13 million for the aging campus. But community outcry demanded better, and the board of trustees listened — increasing the school’s allocation to $25 million and again to $52 million.

Not long after he joined the board, Maxie Johnson said, he began lobbying administrators — including Deputy Superintendent of Operations Scott Layne — to get items placed back into the project that were promised during the design phase, particularly items addressing the school’s drinking water.

One of the major points of controversy — leading to student walkouts in 2016 — was concern about lead in the school’s drinking water. To this day, advocates for South Oak Cliff — including Maxie Johnson — and district leadership disagree about the findings and recommendations from a series of water tests at the school.

In June, the board approved change orders in excess of $2 million, replacing all drinking fountain and kitchen water piping, adding tile wainscoting to the school’s hallways and removing asbestos in certain parts of the school.

Another point of controversy involved the finish on the school’s exterior. Maxie Johnson said that during the design process, the community expressed its desire to have the front of the school completely covered in brick.

Instead, the district used brick only for the new additions to the front and back of the campus and used stucco to cover the old brick along other exterior surfaces.

“We did everything that I felt we could to work with them on their requests,” Layne said. “Obviously, some things come down to opinion — as far as appearances. And we tried to make the best decisions we can; we have architects who make selections for a living, and we rely on them heavily to tell us [what’s best].”

Maxie Johnson and Hinojosa both said adding brick to the rest of the school’s front might happen if voters approve a new bond package next year. Layne estimated the cost of the additional brick work at $1 million.

Maxie Johnson said the community should not have had to fight this hard for quality facilities.

“Until we fix the inequities in Dallas ISD, we’re going to continue running into these problems,” Maxie Johnson said. “We have to see kids as kids — and not what ZIP code they live in or the color of their skin.”

Twitter: @corbettsmithDMN