PROM PERFECT

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 2, 2004 by DEB ACORD THE GAZETTE

Edison School, the whole of District 54JT, is a sturdy stucco building set on the prairie of eastern Colorado. Surrounded by a gravel parking lot and gravel roads, it shares a piece of dry land with a stand of crusty cottonwoods and a rural fire station.

Most days, it's a place where 100 children in kindergarten through 12th grade learn. It has a computer lab and a lunchroom with fold-up tables; a gym; classrooms with high ceilings; and an auditorium with a stage and wooden seats that date to 1922, when the school was built.

But on a recent Saturday night, with the Spanish Peaks shimmering on the horizon and a warm breeze ruffling the buds on the cottonwoods, Edison School is transformed.

It's prom night at Edison. There's a theme -- "A Night of Enchantment" -- a professional disc jockey and an opportunity to dress up.

Prom at Edison is a community affair, with the word "community" meaning an area of about 350 square miles that stretches through three counties: El Paso, where the school sits, Lincoln and Pueblo.

Edison is one of the few schools in the region that hasn't moved its prom to a hotel or convention center. The reason is part tradition and part practicality. One of the 15 smallest schools in Colorado, Edison isn't near anything.

The closest town, Ellicott, has a gas station that closes after dark, a beauty shop and a caf/bar, but nowhere to stage a prom. Colorado Springs is about 40 miles east and north on a lonely stretch of gravel and single-lane highway.

So the staff and students at Edison, which this year has a senior class of five and a junior class of 12, prepared their gymnasium for their "Night of Enchantment."

Paper walls and crepe-paper streamers in blue, silver and white separate the gym into two areas. One is a banquet "hall" appointed with plastic blue and silver plates and glass goblets hand-etched with stars. The other is a ballroom, where silver and blue balloons are bubbles in a river, and paper streamers float from the ceiling to create a filmy tent.

MULTI-TASKING STAFF

Teacher Karin Strohmyer shows up early. In this school, where many teachers double up on assignments, Strohmyer teaches special education and science and coaches track, basketball and cross country.

She is also the junior class sponsor, which means she's in charge of all the streamers, glitter, foil and other elements that will make or break this "Night of Enchantment." On this night, she watches over the students like a doting parent, helping pin a dress and check newly applied acrylic fingernails, keeping track of who has shown up and who hasn't.

This is Strohmyer's first year at Edison. She followed her husband, Dan, here. Dan is Edison's science and band teacher and coaches junior high football, basketball and track. He also has a photography business and, as official prom photographer, has set up lights in a corner of the banquet area.

But early in the evening, Strohmyer stays in the kitchen, where he stands at the school's industrial-sized stove and watches over the banquet fare. On the menu: lettuce salad, roast beef (cattle ranchers whose kids go to school here protested a few years back when chicken was served), mashed potatoes and gravy, corn and an elegant cheesecake pudding dessert, all served by younger students who attack tables in nervous, giggly groups of two and three.

The banquet is for juniors and seniors and their dates, parents of seniors and school staff members. But once the food is gone, the prom opens to everyone, including students down to the sixth grade.

Couples who don't even have kids at Edison show up to try the "Electric Slide" and to hone their swing dancing talents.

In many ways, Edison's prom could be any school's prom, except smaller. Early on, the students divide into groups. When the music starts, boys linger at the edges, and girls form a giddy circle and dance together. The music flows from Shania Twain to Steve Earle to Usher, but it's the pop classics like "YMCA" that pack the dance floor.

The size of this event and its geographic and cultural orientation do have an impact.

This is ranching country, says Bill Everhart, who sold off his cattle a few years ago and now grows alfalfa and other grains.

Everhart's wife, Sandy, teaches computer classes at Edison. They live 11 miles south of the school. "I've taught for 21 years, and I've never seen such a sense of community as I have here," she says.

The community includes ranchers such as the Everharts and others who have moved out here for the wide open spaces. That population is reflected here by the number of black cowboy hats that never leave heads and the prevalence of jeans and boots as well as formal dress.

Kim Norman is a junior at Edison, where she's a track star (100- meter hurdles). She fixed her own hair for the dance, and didn't want a new dress. "I'm wearing one that my sister wore last year," she says. "I'll save the glam for when I'm a senior."

Kim's sister Jessica, a senior and the newly named prom queen, shows up in a sophisticated black dress.