KTEN.com - No One Gets You CloserTushka, OK Heads Back To School After Tornado

TUSHKA, OK- Even though the Tushka school seems unfamiliar on the outside, the inside still has the same familiar feeling it had before the tornado.

Everybody seems to show a sense of pride, as they walk down the halls of the temporary buildings.

The first day of school, usually students are used to new tennis shoes and clothes, but Tushka schools have a new buildings as well.

After a long summer, Matt Simpson, the high school principal is glad to be back.  

"We are actually doing really well," Simpson said. "It's been a long, exhausting summer to get to this point, but today makes it all better. When we see the kids going back to class and there is a since of normalcy and they've kind of done what they always done and that's nice." 

Some of the most excited students to be back? The seniors. Even though they are ready for their future, the seniors are glad to be graduating from their own school.

"I'm really thankful for it, because I thought our school was going, to like, our kids would be moved to Caney or Atoka, you know just a bigger school, and I didn't want that to happen," Senior, Mikaela Hooper, said. "Being my senior year and everything, I wouldn't get to graduate at my hometown."

"But now she does get to graduate, with the rest of her 38 classmates.    

The temporary school, they are currently in, came in many different pieces.

"The high school building came in 11 different pieces and we started putting it together and that makes the high school building," Simpson said. "The cafeteria came in 3 different pieces and the elementary building came in 10. So we now have 3 large buildings after they've been put all together."

"I'm very thankful we have a building, a nice building actually, because at first when you drive by you just see a single trailer, it looked kind of bad, it scared me at first. But now, I'm really surprised how it turned out," Senior, Tyler Rector, said.

With news supplies, like books and desks, the students have a sense of pride.

"It means a lot, a lot of pride. The tornado tried to take us down, but we're still here and we are going to stay here."

When walking through the halls, you can't even tell there was a tornado, just four short months ago, even if their bells and intercoms aren't working yet. 

Kylie Dixon, KTEN News