Joplin School District
The Joplin School District is located in Jasper and Newton Counties in the City of Joplin, Missouri. It serves more than 7,700 students in the school district.On May 22, 2011, an EF5 tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri. In the path of the tornado, Joplin High School, Franklin Technical Center, East Middle School, Irving Elementary, and Emerson Elementary were destroyed; Cecil Floyd Elementary, Duquesne Elementary, Eastmorland Elementary, and Kelsey Norman were damaged as well. In the months after the tornado, plans have been made to rebuild all schools that were destroyed in the tornado. The school district re-opened its Middle and Elementary schools on January 9, 2014; and Joplin High School and Franklin Technical Center re-opened in August 2014.
Tornado outbreak of April 14–16, 2011
The outbreak was the deadliest tornadic event in the United States since the 2008 Super Tuesday tornado outbreak that occurred on February 5 and 6, 2008, when 57 people were killed across four states. In North Carolina, the outbreak was the state's largest since March 1984. Describing the outbreak, AccuWeather meteorologist Henry Margusity said, "There has not been a tornado outbreak in history over three days with this many tornadoes spawned by a single storm system". That record would later be smashed by the 2011 Super Outbreak that occurred just over a week after this outbreak.