You may see a large and very visible police presence around the campus and inside OLS over the next week or so. This is training.  The Homewood Police Department will be conducting active shooter response training on the campus of Our Lady of Sorrows School July 16 and 17 and July 20 through 24, from 9am to 3pm each day. This is part of HPD's annual training and will also include medical trauma treatment and first aid. We wanted to make sure you knew what was happening if you see the activity in the area.

The U.S. Highway 31 pedestrian tunnel is temporarily closed while it undergoes a major renovation. While crews are at work over the next few months, we thought it would be a good time to look back at the history of Homewood's longest-serving pedestrian connection. For more than 70 years, the tunnel has provided generations of Homewood families with a safe passage beneath a busy roadway. The tunnel was constructed in 1954 after widening of U.S. Highway 31, then known as Montgomery Highway. At the time, many students who attended Shades Cahaba Elementary lived on the west side of 31. Rather than requiring hundreds of children to cross a rapidly expanding highway at street level, community leaders pushed for a pedestrian underpass. To help make room for the tunnel's west entrance, Hill Food Store, the predecessor to today's Piggly Wiggly, provided a portion of its parking lot.