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Piper High School was a brand new "open concept" experimental school, which implemented a number of very exciting ideas in education when it opened in 1972, and its first Principal was Mr. Robert C. Beale, who previously had served in the United States Marine Corp during the Korean War. The 'open concept school' made concrete part of the inertia that was set in motion by President John F. Kennedy's "climb every mountain" idealism of "the best and the brightest" young educators. Consequently, the faculty was comprised of superb teachers not so very much older than their students, rallying from the assassination of JFK, and charged to continue the ideals that inspired them to get into Education: the ethnic diversity of the faculty alone is a case in point of this, because for the 14 year old freshman 9th Grade Class, this was a first. The main event was the facility for the work of education to take place. The schools building itself was novel. The building was constructed literally at the end of the road, at the furthest edge of developed land within Broward County, since University Drive ended at Piper High School in 1972, and the campus was surrounded by undeveloped, misty Florida wetlands, governed by Sunrise Golf Village Mayor John Lomelo. The building rose from its natural surroundings gleaming with finished shiny aggregate, and was laid out in five wings that were all connected by corridors to a large, central hub. The hub was fully enclosed with cathedral ceilings, where all 50 State Flags were brightly arrayed in a square oculus. The central hub, on one side, presented a glass-walled library with (primitive) computers--but cutting-edge technology in 1972. Central to the hub, and architecturally the most remarkable feature, was a spacious, concrete, tan-carpeted mezzanine three feet above the surrounding floor, ascended on all four sides by two seamless steps, where hundreds of students could easily walk by each other on the way to another class in between periods, cued by a bell. On another side, and at the base of the mezzanine, multiple lockers were set up in grey 6-foot rows, sufficient to quarter the entire student body (the Freshman Class alone numbered approximately 400 students) bearing a peculiar resemblance to a columbarium by the compactness of their storage niches. A third side held an auditorium, which featured a performance stage for a performances by a full student orchestra. The final side held an open-air cafeteria, where the science of "the Four Food Groups" was brought to life; Lunch was served for free, with a great amount of conscious effort and pride put into variety and quality by the Culinary professionals. The Cafeteria area opened out, through glass ingress and egress doors, directly to a landscaped spacious green lawn, where students ate cups of soft-serve ice cream,which cost 25 cents, during an exhilarating hour-long Lunch period. Branching off from the trunk of the central hub were five instructional buildings, each with its own category of curricula: Math (Calculus), Science (with full Laboratories), and Communications (to include English, German, French, and Spanish). Three of these buildings had the new 'open classrooms' which were not walled-off from the corridors,in a departure from the traditional schools that the entire student body had, up to that time, been educated in. The fourth was for Art, including painting, clay throwing and glazing (with a kiln), a full Print Shop, and a Woodworking Shop with working table-saws. The fifth was for the Gymnasium, including a large locker room and group (barracks-like) showers, because Physical Education was a high priority, and everyone had to go outside and play for an hour each and every school day. Roma Adkins became the principal in 1994.[10] The school is named after aviation pioneer William T. Piper, who donated the land upon which the school was built.
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