Nickname: The Air Capital, The Peerless City Location in the state of Kansas County Sedgwick Government  - Mayor Carlos Mayans Area  - City 359. ...

History

Campus High School opened in the fall of 1960. Its official name at that time was Rural High School District 191. It was formed to serve the elementary schools of Haysville, Oatville, South Riverside and Enterprise. The name "Campus" was chosen by the students who were to attend the new high school. Prior to the opening of Campus, students from these elementaries could choose between Derby, Clearwater or Wichita for high school attendance.

When Rural H.S. 191 was formed in 1958, a bond issue of $4 million was passed to build two high schools. The present Campus High School was to be called North Campus High School and a second South Campus High School was to be built in Haysville at the corner of Meridian and 71st street. By the time Campus was completed in 1960, costs had run to $2.75 million with only $1

.25 million left for the south high school. Construction on this South Campus High School began immediately, but only five buildings were completed. Campus High School opened in the fall of 1960 with an enrollment of approximately 1200 students.

Several things made Campus unique at the time of its construction. The obvious thing is its architecture. The story is that several school board members visited schools in the southwestern United States when looking at design plans, thus the unique lay-out of the facility. The facility was also unique at that time in that it had a pool, was air conditioned and was all electric. Early drawings of the facility included an airplane runway along the northern boundary of the campus so the school could teach aviation. Such a drawing can be seen in the entry of the administration building at Campus. The south campus actually did have a runway which was occasionally used until the late 60's. All of this combined to bring about much resentment in the community of Haysville. Rumors persisted for years that the facility had heated sidewalks. The builder had placed tunnels under the sidewalks to carry air to the buildings. This made and still does make the sidewalks heat up and melt snow, thus the reason for the rumors.

Public sentiment became even more negative when the Wichita district annexed part of Rural High School 191 in 1961. This took almost half the student population of Campus High School. The district was now left with 1 1/2 high schools, but only enough students for one school. The south high school site would remain empty from 1961-66. In the fall of 1967, Freeman elementary opened on that site.

Campus has had 4 additions to the original facility in the past 40 years. The library has been expanded, locker rooms were added to the gym, classrooms were added to the west side of "G" building and a new science building and gym addition were completed in 1999. The school is also undergoing renovation to turn it into a single building. The renovation includes a new, larger cafeteria, a new library, and new offices, as well as renovations on all of the other buildings except "J", the science building. The renovation is scheduled to be done by Spring of the year 2009.

Notes on Name

Wichita Haysville Campus High School is better known as Haysville Campus High School, or even simpler as Campus High School, but Kansas law requires the district and city name in front of the school name, so, because the school is located in Wichita, it requires Wichita in the name, followed by the district which is Haysville, and then the name Campus.

CHS Talk

Launched on March 26, 2007 the website CHS Talk has been the unofficial and unaffiliated student run website for Campus High School. The website was created by Andrew Strubhar who is a student at Campus High School. This database driven social networking type site was coded in PHP and features new web technology such as Ajax.

Awards

Currently Acquiring List Of Awards, Will be updated soon

Sources

All information except the "CHS Talk" notation on this page was acquired from the school website and the Kansas State Department of Education website. Information about "CHS Talk" was acquired from the website CHS Talk.