The beloved Highway 24 road stop, JBZ's Rockin' B & Mercantile, was still freshly realizing its potential when the pandemic shut its doors a year ago.

So much was happening here. A popular coffee shop. A babbling waterfall built into a former farm pond. A developing event space and store front. Shaded walks through five acres of gentle hills.

Suddenly it was on the market.

Meanwhile, just down the road at the Fort Osage School District’s campus, program planners were brainstorming opportunities for real-world learning for east Jackson County students.

Could this be what they were looking for?

The owner-operator of the Rockin’ B, Sheri Bedsworth, was an alum and long-time supporter of the district and just might be happy to make a deal. And there, in their February meeting, the district team’s imaginations began to run wild.

Fort Osage’s entrepreneurial studies instructor Whitney Scott, career and technology center manager Susie Suits and communications director Stephanie Smith began rolling out ideas, said Superintendent Jason Snodgrass, who was there with them, also thinking widely.

Students could develop the business plans, create marketing campaigns and commercial designs and staff and manage the operation. Culinary arts students could provide food items. Computer science students could develop phone apps for customers. Construction trades and HVAC students could help build out the site.

“As you can see the possibilities are endless . . . ,” Snodgrass said.

It can be community space, too. FFA students could build a garden. The district could manage community events. Elementary school classrooms can plan field trips here. Pumpkin carving. Face-painting. The district’s bands and choirs could plan events and perform.

“It’s much more than a coffee shop,” Snodgrass said.

The Bedsworths were eager to deal with the district, just as the team had hoped. In June, the school board approved the purchase. The property, which had been appraised at $700,000, was purchased for $475,000, the district announced.

The community cheered the district’s plan to repurpose the Rockin’ B. The June 9 announcement of the sale and the district’s plans on its Facebook page has generated more than 1,400 “likes” and been shared more than 500 times — the biggest response ever to a district post, said Director of Public Relations Stephanie Smith.

“The community is thrilled” that the coffee shop is coming back, said Connie Parker, LINC’s site coordinator for the Caring Communities program in Buckner. “Just thrilled to have a nice place to go.”

The district will have administrators overseeing the project, including a professional food manager, but this will be a student-run enterprise, Snodgrass said. The E-Studies program will bring together Fort Osage students as well as Blue Springs, Grain Valley and Oak Grove districts’ students. They will experience the successes and the failures — and learn.

Fort Osage Career Center senior Alex Israelite, 17, expects his tour in the district’s Entrepreneurial Studies — E-Studies — program will provide his crowning high school experience.

The timing is exciting, he said, being able to be part of the start-up team.

“I’m a hands-on learner,” he said, “so this teaches me so much more than sitting in a classroom. This is the best experience I could get in high school.”

He was visiting the site on a hot July afternoon when the Rockin’ B’s doors were closed, the storefronts and parking lot empty, as dragonflies flitted among the tall grasses at the edge of the waterfall pond.

But peering in the windows, he could see the dining tables, chairs and kitchen appliances all still in place — ready and waiting for the fall.

“It’s a dream come true,” he said. “It’s a real-world example, being able to serve other people, learning the basic skills of being in a business and the management side of things. It’s something that will help me the rest of my life — whatever I do.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer

Video edited by Bryan Shepard