PLANT CITY, Fla. — Burney Elementary School in Plant City celebrated a big birthday — the school turned 100 years old. It was named after Esther Dorothy Burney. She and her husband were two of Plant City’s earliest teachers.
The school’s principal and staff held a special centennial celebration for all past and present students on Aug. 24.
Brooke Quinlan’s three years as principal at Burney Elementary is nothing compared to its 100 years as a school.
“The school has been many different things, it was a strawberry school, a temporary home for Tomlin Middle School, it was a kindergarten and sixth-grade center, as well as an ESE center, it had a different name at one point, it’s been a lot of different things.”
Quinlan says she’s been preparing students all year for this celebration.
“It’s hard for the kids to wrap their minds around that they’re in something that’s 100 years old. Some of the younger kids will ask me if I’ve worked here that long, of course the answer is no, but the concept of time for those youngest ones isn’t quite there to get the gravity of how important this is that it’s still standing,” she said.
And while working in a 100-year-old building presents certain challenges, there are also some unique finds.
“If you open these ceiling vents, it is the original 3-foot-wide plank, diagonal wood. This door right here used to have, prior to a construction project, something they used to call Esther’s closet,” said Quinlan.
Those are all things people at the centennial celebration learned through student historians.
Alan Griffin, a Plant City native, skimmed through albums of old photos, reminiscing. He attended first through sixth grade there in 1954.
“It’s changed a lot, of course. It’s expanded, but I have a lot of fond memories here,” he said.
And that is what Quinlan says makes this old, brick school so special, knowing over the last hundred years, tens of thousands of students have fond memories, and thousands more will make them in the years to come.