Lincoln Standing Bear High School prepares to open in the fall

July 25, 2023

Lincoln Standing Bear staff members will be writing the first lines of the new high school’s story this academic year.

They had a chance to pen the opening words of that introductory chapter during an informational meeting July 10.

Dozens of teachers and staff members gathered on the second floor of Lincoln Standing Bear to learn more about the school district’s newest high school. Administrators and operations team members provided teachers with many details about the building’s construction process and layout design. They also took part in team-building activities such as a scavenger hunt and a rock-paper-scissors contest.

Veteran administrator Sue Cassata will serve as Lincoln Standing Bear’s first principal. She spent the previous 14 years as principal at Lincoln East and earned multiple state awards for her leadership and administrative skills. She has also worked at Lincoln North Star and Lincoln Southeast during her 30-year career.

Cassata said she felt honored to have a chance to start something from scratch with the Grizzlies family. She has been involved in nearly every aspect of the school-launching process for the past several years.

“There is no other experience like it that I can remember in my educational career,” Cassata said. “I’m incredibly excited. It’s great to be able to be a part of this from the ground up. My hope is that the students and parents know that we’re doing everything we can to make this a really good experience for them.”

Ryan Burnison and Jacob Shaffer will be two members of the inaugural group of teachers at the school. Burnison graduated from Louisville High School and will be teaching social studies at Lincoln Standing Bear. He said he was looking forward to starting his time at the new school, which is located in the southeast corner of the city at 70th Street and Saltillo Road.

“It’s exciting to be here as the school is starting up,” Burnison said. “I’m looking forward to it. There’s a lot of energy here and it’s going to be fun to be part of this entire team.”

Burnison will also be the school’s first head wrestling coach. He was head coach for four years at Sabino High School in Tucson, Ariz., before becoming head coach at Warner Pacific University in Portland, Ore. He decided to move closer to his hometown this year and begin working with the Grizzlies.

“Being able to lay a foundation for a completely new program is something I’m looking forward to,” Burnison said. “We’ll be able to instill a new culture here, which means that we’ll get to set the expectations about how the whole program will go both now and in the future. It’s really cool to think that the expectations and culture that will be starting this year will be something that will be here 10 or 20 years from now.”

Shaffer worked at Elmwood-Murdock Public Schools for seven years before opting to join Lincoln Standing Bear’s team. He helped Elmwood-Murdock students win dozens of state and national awards in their Future Business Leaders of America program. He will oversee Lincoln Standing Bear’s FBLA chapter and will be chairperson of the business department.

“It’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be here,” Shaffer said. “To have an opportunity to be a part of the first team here is something I’m excited about. I’m looking forward to getting started and seeing all of the kids here on the first day of school.”

Staff members have collaborated with members of the Ponca Tribe throughout the school preparation process. They have spent many hours learning about both the tribe and the history surrounding Chief Standing Bear, who is the school’s namesake.

Chief Standing Bear was a leader of the Ponca Tribe who took part in the landmark Standing Bear v. Crook court case in May 1879. The U.S. District Court of Omaha ruled that he and other members of the Ponca Tribe were “persons” under the law and were entitled to the rights of all other Americans.

Lincoln Standing Bear Associate Principal Trisha Lind taught junior high students at both Park and Irving schools for more than a decade before taking on her current role. She said it was vital for students to learn about and remember Chief Standing Bear’s legacy as a civil rights leader.

“I taught U.S. history for a number of years, so learning about the Ponca Tribe and where they came from and what their history is has been incredibly rewarding,” Lind said. “I think it’s really important for students to know the history of Standing Bear and who he was and how the Ponca lived. That’s something that is a major part of who we are as a school.”

One of the primary parts of the July 10 meeting was a presentation by operations team members and Clark & Enersen architects. Scott Wieskamp, the district’s director of operations, led a group that spoke for 70 minutes about every step in the construction and design of the campus.

Teachers learned how 187 people made decisions about everything ranging from the location of classrooms to the types of lighting systems in the building. They discovered that the geothermal energy grid includes 430 wells, that each academic pod will have a learning commons and that the school will be able to accommodate up to 2,000 students.

Architects, construction engineers, interior designers and sustainability coordinators produced more than 700 pages of drawings for the creation of Lincoln Standing Bear.

“We’ve had hundreds of meetings about this school,” Wieskamp told the group. “This has been six to seven years in the making, so we’ve had a lot of questions to answer and ideas that have come up about the building. There have been many, many people who have put a lot of thought and effort into this.”

Lincoln Standing Bear Associate Principal David Bell was an assistant activities director at Lincoln North Star when that high school opened in 2003. He said he and other staff members were looking forward to writing the first lines of Lincoln Standing Bear High School’s story in 2023.

“I remember how excited everyone was when North Star opened, and you can tell that the same type of excitement is here at Standing Bear,” Bell said. “We want students, parents and the whole community to know that we’re here for them. This is going to be a great school for everyone to be at.”

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