Putnam City’s Kirkland Elementary School is inviting current and former students, teachers, administrators and neighbors to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the school by attending a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 11, in the school’s gymnasium, 6020 N. Independence.

Patrons are also invited to attend the school's annual Veteran’s Day assembly at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 9, in the school gym, and then take tours of the school until 11 a.m. 

Principal Ron Christy says Kirkland Elementary has a unique and interesting history.

In the late 1950s, Christy says, there were many new residential neighborhoods being developed in northwest Oklahoma City. Some of these new neighborhoods were located along the eastern edge of the Putnam City school district.

A movement began growing in the area among parents who did not want to send their children to school over four miles away to Putnam City’s Central Elementary site on N.W. 39th Expressway west of Ann Arbor. At the same time, these residents noticed new elementary schools were being completed nearby in the Oklahoma City school district to serve other fast-developing, adjacent, new neighborhoods of northwest Oklahoma City. As a result, these residents began circulating a petition to re-district their area to be part of the Oklahoma City school district.

The superintendent of Putnam City Schools at the time was Denver D. Kirkland. To head off the problem, Christy says, Kirkland put forth a bond issue for voters to consider that would fund the cost to purchase land and build a new grade school to serve the northeastern part of the district. The bond issue was approved, the land was purchased, and the school building now known as D.D. Kirkland Elementary School was completed and occupied in October 1957. It was the first Putnam City school to be built away from the concentration of schools near N.W. 39th and Ann Arbor.

Christy says that when the building was completed in October 1957, principal Elmer MKcKeeman oversaw a building that contained just an office, seven classrooms and a cafeteria and kitchen. Soon after Kirkland’s opening, the school had an enrollment of nearly 250 pupils, and two additional classrooms had to be set up in one end of the cafeteria. Since that time, the Kirkland Elementary has undergone many expansions (including a gymnasium) and changes to become the present-day building.

The school currently has an enrollment of about 290 students in PreKindergarten through 5th grade.

The next district school to hit its 50th anniversary will be Coronado Heights Elementary School in 2009.

That's Kirkland Elementary just to the right (north) of the drive-in movie theater. Baptist Medical Center, much smaller at the time, is near the top of the photo.