Vacant O'Hara High School Reborn as Kansas City Therapy Campus for 150 Kids

A Kansas City high school building that sat empty and mothballed for more than a decade opened its doors again this week, this time as a therapeutic education campus for students working through serious emotional and behavioral challenges. The Cornerstones of Care Education Campus, housed in the former Archbishop O'Hara High School at 9001 James A. Reed Road, can serve up to 150 K-12 students and combines two separate therapeutic day treatment schools into a single facility.

The 50-year-old building had stood vacant for more than 10 years before Cornerstones of Care repurposed it, according to KCTV. Meredith Rose of Cornerstones of Care said the building sat vacant and mothballed for more than a decade before the organization moved in, and told the station that students at the new campus are welcome and safe there. The campus draws students from more than 40 districts across Missouri and Kansas, reflecting how far the nonprofit's day-treatment reach extends beyond Kansas City itself.

The building itself carries its own history. Archbishop O'Hara High School first opened in 1965 and closed at the end of the 2016-2017 school year after 50 years, a casualty of declining enrollment that hit Catholic urban high schools across the region, as reported by KCUR. After the closure, the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph folded O'Hara's student body together with Independence's St. Mary's High School into the newly built St. Michael the Archangel Catholic High School in Lee's Summit, according to the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The vacant O'Hara building was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, per Wikipedia. Missouri State Parks' Jackson County National Register Listings identify 9001 James A. Reed Road, Kansas City, with the date 2/2/2021.

From Two Aging Campuses to One 90,000-Square-Foot Hub

The new campus spans 90,000 square feet under a 10-year lease, a 260 percent increase in physical space compared with the organization's two previous day-school facilities combined, according to the Catholic Key. The consolidation closed student day-treatment operations at the K-8 Gillis Campus on Wornall Road and shifted high school students out of the Ozanam Campus on 137th Street, which the organization is keeping only as administrative office space, the Martin City Telegraph reported.

For its first academic year, the campus enrolled roughly 100 students taught by 12 to 13 teachers, with class sizes kept to 10 to 12 students and full-time classroom paraprofessionals in every room, the outlet noted. The building now holds 20 classrooms and five therapy suites, with licensed clinical therapists providing on-site support. Brandon Goodwin, a Cornerstones of Care leader, told KCTV that staff make a point of celebrating students' achievements the way a team might celebrate a game-winning touchdown, while Arthur Seabury said the campus leans on therapeutic components and interventions specifically designed to help students grow.

A Fifth Grader Finds His Footing

Jakobe Weakland, a fifth grader at the campus, told KCTV he really likes the new school, singling out the new playground and math as his favorite subject. Teachers at the campus work to help students understand and process their emotions, part of the school's broader therapeutic education and behavioral support approach.

That return-to-district model matters because youth mental health needs are rising, according to KCTV, and Missouri has lost 20 percent of its residential treatment facilities since 2020, per figures cited by Cornerstones of Care leaders. Day-treatment schools like this one are increasingly serving as an intermediary step for districts trying to place students who need more support than a typical classroom can offer but don't require residential care.

Built for More Than the Classroom

Beyond the K-12 classrooms, the campus footprint includes a five-acre outdoor vocational training area for the organization's Build Trybe program, which teaches youth hands-on trades in landscaping, conservation, and seed-to-plate culinary work, according to Cornerstones of Care. The site also houses a Collaborative Learning simulation lab featuring a fully furnished mock home, built to train case managers, foster parents, and biological parents in trauma-informed family care practices.

Cornerstones of Care traces its roots back 156 years to 1870, when Mary Gillis Troost established the Gillis Home for Orphans in Kansas City, according to the Martin City Telegraph. That long institutional history now stretches into a building that once educated generations of Catholic high schoolers and, after sitting empty for more than a decade, is once again filled with students — this time working through a very different kind of school day.