THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE
DEPARTMENT OF CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION
SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NESHAMINY SCHOOL DISTRICT
EDWARD E. TERMYNA III
Fall 2010
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in Secondary Education with honors in Secondary Education
Reviewed and approved* by the following:
David A. Gamson Associate Professor of Education Thesis supervisor
Scott A. Metzger Assistant Professor of Education Honors adviser
* Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College i
ABSTRACT
The Neshaminy School District is a school district to the northeast of the city of
Philadelphia. The School District was formed in 1950 from the consolidation of six other local districts, including Middletown Township, Langhorne Borough, Langhorne Manor Borough,
Hulmeville Borough, Penndel Borough and Lower Southampton Township. The process of consolidation was slow as these districts joined together one by one, with the hope of better schools for their students. The process began in 1922 when Middletown Township and
Langhorne Borough constructed a joint board agreement, and ended in 1950 when the last of the school districts, Lower Southampton Township, joined the joint board agreement.
The process of consolidation in the Neshaminy area was aided by a few trends, with the most significant being the public’s interest in better high school facilities. Langhorne-
Middletown High School, the only high school in the area, was largely inadequate from the
1930’s up until the 1950’s. The public wanted better facilities for their students, and in order for the districts to afford this, consolidation was necessary since none of the districts could afford to finance building projects on their own. Another major influence was state and national trends for school district consolidation. As more and more students enrolled and finished high school after
WWI, the curriculum and the needs in schools changed. Schools needed to consolidate in order to provide the high school facilities in this new era of schooling. The Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction was a major influence in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It set regulations for schools and pushed for school consolidation throughout the state. Its influence was seen throughout the history of consolidation in the Neshaminy area.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES………………………………...………………………………………………iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………...……..iv
PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………….…...…….1
Chapter 1 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………...……3
Chapter 2 Early Consolidation and Deficienceis in Langhorne Middletown High School...... 4
Chapter 3 Changing Scope of Education + School Consolidation Movement……………….….11
Chapter 4 Trends in General School Board Policies in Langhorne-Middletown Area from 1945-
1950………………………………………………………………………………………14
Chapter 5 Report and Recommendations on the Secondary School……………………….…….19
Chapter 6 The Pennsylvania Economy League’s Report………………………………….……..27
Chapter 7 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………...37
References…………………………………………………………………….…………………..43
iii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Population Trends Shown by Federal Census Reports……………………………...…..39
Table 2: Number of Live Births and Rates per Thousand of Total Population By Place of
Residence in Rural Bucks County, 1937 to 1944. ………………………….……………40
Table 4: Children of School Age Over 10-Year Period (Ages 6 to 16 Inclusive) As Shown By
School Census Reports……………………………………………………………….….41
Table 12: School Plant Evaluation Scores on Seven Major Items of the League’s Score Card….42
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to thank my thesis adviser Dr. David A Gamson for his guidance and support throughout the course of my research. His patience and expertise in this area were undoubtedly essential to me finishing this project. Without his supervision, this would have been impossible. I would also like to thank my honors adviser Dr. Scott A Metzger. Dr. Metzger was a huge help in getting me to focus my ideas into a workable thesis, and for helping me get in contact with Dr. Gamson. I would also like to thank the Neshaminy School District’s
Administrative offices for their help, especially Superintendent Dr. Louis T. Muenker, Mr.
Paradise, Edna Hennelly and Debby Spadaccino. They took time to meet with me, opened up their offices for me to do research, and went out of their way to locate old school board minutes and other historic documents that had not been touched in years. Above all I’d like to thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ, for life beyond the grave and for keeping me sane throughout the rigor of this process. 1
PREFACE
For the past few years I have spent a fair amount of leisure time looking through historic material on my hometown of Langhorne, Pennsylvania. The Historic Langhorne Association
(HLA) is the local historic society, housed in the Anna Mary Williamson library in Langhorne borough. The HLA has a website which is filled with photos from ―back in time‖. It was there that I came across numerous photos of old sites, including schools in the area that no longer exist.
At one point I came across a picture of the original Langhorne-Middletown High School, which peaked my interest. As a Secondary Education major, I have a deep interest in all things school related, especially history. In 2006 I graduated from the local public school, Neshaminy High
School, which is the only high school in the Neshaminy School District. After seeing the photo of Langhorne High School, which no longer serves as a school, I began to wonder, when did
Neshaminy become Neshaminy? I remember when I was in high school seeing plaques that showed the high school having been built in 1953, but I wanted to know why this school was constructed.
I knew that Langhorne’s neighboring town, Levittown, was built right around the same time that Neshaminy High School was built; naturally, I thought there was a correlation. During its building from 1951 to 1957, Levittown was the largest planned suburban community in the
United States (Levittowners). Levittown was built in three different townships and three different school districts, including the Neshaminy School District, where 4,562 Levittown homes were built. One of the most intriguing facts about Levittown was the rapid pace at which it was built.
Six thousand men were employed on the project, building 17,311 houses, 177 miles of streets, five Olympic-size pools and two shopping centers. By the summer of 1952, one complete house was produced every 12 minutes and 500 families were moving in every month (Mullane 1A). I 2
began to wonder what effect Levittown’s building had on the creation of the district and the building of its new high school. The Neshaminy School District itself was not actually a creation, but rather a consolidation of the six small rural school districts within the area.
My thought was that with the increase of families, the three school districts within
Levittown’s boundaries (Pennsbury, Neshaminy and Bristol Township), probably came under enormous stress with an influx of new students. I was certain that there was a direct correlation between the building of Levittown and the creation of Neshaminy School District, and its new high school building. My guess was that with the hurried influx of families, the numbers of students exhausted the available space at Langhorne-Middletown High School. However, when I began to do my research, I found no evidence to back up my assumption. In fact, two years before Levittown’s building, an outside agency did a comprehensive analysis of the six school districts within the Neshaminy area, with the purpose of improving the educational facilities, consolidating the districts into one and building a new high school. The report predicted new home development in the area, but not in the 550 acres of farmland that would become
Levittown. That area was completely overlooked as an area of home development, though it ended up being the area of largest growth. The area being overlooked showed that the forces that were pushing for school district consolidation in the Neshaminy area had no idea that Levittown was about to be built, and, as a result, did not have a direct effect on the consolidation movement.
It also throws out my hypothesis that Levittown’s building was the primary reason for the consolidation of the six rural school districts; it was not a reason for it at all. The next six chapters reveal the true reasons for consolidation in the Neshaminy area where public demand for better educational facilities, population trends and sufficient school buildings, with state and national movements paving the way.
3
Chapter 1
Introduction
The truth is that school district consolidation was a slow process. The Neshaminy School
District was originally six small rural school districts including Middletown Township,
Langhorne Borough, Langhorne Manor, Penndel Borough, Hulmeville Borough and Lower
Southampton Township. It took 28 years from 1922 to 1950 to consolidate these six school districts into one larger district. The process was guided by historical changes in the purpose of education, rising costs to meet these changes, national and state movements for consolidation, public interest in the quality of education and, most importantly, building shortcomings. By the late 1940’s, reformers began to say that there were too many school districts of too small a size.
This was problematic. It was expensive to operate such small schools and the education offered was inadequate. Nationally, a movement started to consolidate and reorganize small school districts into larger ones. Additionally, this thesis seeks to trace the slow and difficult consolidation movement that took place in the six small districts, which eventually became the
Neshaminy School District, and explain why and how the movement happened. This thesis will also address the following questions: What organizations or people pushed for consolidation in the Neshaminy area and around the state and country? What were the reasons for consolidation?
How quickly did this movement happen in the Neshaminy area?
4
Chapter 2
Early Consolidation and Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown High School
The earliest evidence of school consolidation in the Neshaminy area began in 1922 when the school boards of Middletown Township and Langhorne Borough established one of the first joint boards in Eastern Pennsylvania. Dr. Charles Boehm, County Superintendent of schools in
Bucks County during the 1940’s and 1950’s, explained the reasons for this early consolidation movement: ―After the first World War there was another revival in interest of better public schools in this county. This revival centered on the establishment of larger high schools by either consolidating small high schools or eliminating them entirely‖ (Boehm, 1). Before the joint board agreement, Middletown Township had a high school in Hulmeville, while Langhorne operated a separate high school in the borough. Both schools would have been rather small in number of students; consequently, a joint board agreement was established between Langhorne
Borough and Middletown Township with the hope that a new high school building would be provided.
Though a joint board was established in 1922 in order to construct a new high school, by
1930 a new school building was still not in the works, and Langhorne-Middletown High School was experiencing many limitations in its school plant facilities. In 1930, the school board began to talk at their meetings about the overcrowded conditions at the high school. At a school board meeting on January 8, 1931, Dr. Driner of the State Department of Education read a letter, which stated that Langhorne-Middletown High School must provide additional facilities for the following term; however, no specifics were mentioned in the school board minutes (Middletown,
24). This quick note in the school board minutes reveals that the State Department of Public
Instruction was shaping decisions made in the Neshaminy area. In 1931 the board published a 5
pamphlet titled Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown High School caused by Lack of Class
Rooms, Auditorium, and Gymnasium, which addressed some of the shortcomings that Dr. Driner saw in the high school. It is also likely that this document was passed around at the special school board meeting on February 16, 1932, which was held to consider a two-room addition at the high school, in an attempt to alleviate overcrowded conditions (Middletown 57).
Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown High School caused by Lack of Class Rooms,
Auditorium, and Gymnasium reveals ten important building problems of the high school. The school board believed that it could solve some of these problems with a two-room addition. From reading the document, it is clear that the board is making a case that it needs a two room addition in the immediate future, but it is not clear from the pamphlet who they are trying to persuade.
They may be trying to persuade tax payers, because in the school board minutes from the
February 16th meeting, it is mentioned that the addition would not raise the tax rate of Langhorne or Middletown residents. Nonetheless, this document is important because it shows us that these problems were real concerns for the district and was just the beginning of many more to come.
For the next two decades, these problems would not be solved because the board had trouble building the addition. They were never able to build an auditorium or gymnasium, and as time passed on, the inadequacy of the facilities grew worse. The school building deficiencies aided the consolidation process in the Neshaminy area. The six school districts within the Neshaminy area slowly created joint board agreements with the hope of better school facilities – the greatest concern being the new high school building.
In the pamphlet Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown High School caused by Lack of
Class Rooms, Auditorium, and Gymnasium, the first problem in the school plant facility was labeled Deficiency #1, No Auditorium or Assembly Room. This problem was said to affect school pride and discipline. The document mentions that due to the lack of an auditorium, during the school Christmas program, only 25 percent of students and their families were able to see the 6
performances. Additionally, plays and graduation ceremonies had to be held at South Langhorne
Casino. The need for an assembly room was important for the ―awakening of that intangible but high desirable asset called school spirit‖ (―Deficiencies,‖ 4). The crowded conditions that the school was facing also made for undesirable school assemblies. Two hundred students had to crowd into classrooms with poor ventilation and insufficient seating. The school board believed that if a proper assembly room was established, the students would have greater school spirit, leading to better attendance and behavior. As a means of eliminating tardiness and reducing absence, the school board believed that ―a good school assembly organization is worth more than an attendance officer‖ (5).
The second problem with the school was Deficiency #2, Unsatisfactory Health Program and Winter Athletics. According to the board, this was one of the biggest concerns facing the
Langhorne-Middletown High School. Absent from the high school was any type of gymnasium, which greatly hindered the health program at the high school. All gym classes had to be held outside. During this time, 200 students would be sent out at once, which meant that all the teachers in the building had to supervise. Without a gymnasium, all winter athletic programs for girls were abolished and there was no boys’ basketball program. The document mentions that the
State Department of Public Instruction would not even approve building plans of high schools that did not make provision for a gymnasium (―Deficiencies,‖ 6). This meant that the Langhorne-
Middletown High School was already out of date by 1931, not providing necessary functions that the State Department of Public Instruction required, and it shows that a new high school was a priority for the near future. This is also more evidence that the State Department of Public
Instruction was shaping the educational program and consolidation movement at Neshaminy.
Deficiencies #3 and #4 were grouped together in the document. Deficiency #3 was the problem of No Study Hall, and Deficiency #4 was Inadequate Library Space. The Langhorne-
Middletown High School did not have a study hall. The school wanted to teach students good 7
study habits, but without a study hall this was difficult. During study periods, students could not study in a quiet room. Instead they had to sit in classrooms where recitations were taking place due to the lack of space. The other concern was the library. Langhorne-Middletown High School was classified as a group 4 school by The State Department of Public Instruction, since it had 100 to 250 pupils. As such, the Department of Public Instruction set up certain standards for its school library. The library at Langhorne-Middletown High School conformed to all the standards except the ones regarding a teacher-librarian, a reading room, tables and chairs. Given the circumstances, the library was only 33% efficient according to the report (―Deficiencies,‖ 8).
Deficiencies #5 and #6 dealt with the Industrial Arts and Home Economics programs at the high school. Due to overcrowded conditions in the academic classes, the Langhorne-
Middletown High School stopped industrial arts and the home economics classes. However, they acknowledged in 1931 that it was not fair to offer a college preparatory education for their wealthier students who could afford to go on to college and reject education for less fortunate students who would not be heading on to college. Some students did not have the financial means to go on to higher education. These students would instead finish school and head straight to the work force, according to the Board. For these students, a college preparatory education was of little value; what was more useful for students heading straight to the workforce were courses in the industrial arts and home economics. For this reason, the school believed that these programs should be reestablished as soon as possible (―Deficiencies,‖ 9). This also raised the concern that the quality of education at Langhorne-Middletown High School was inadequate compared to bigger city high schools. ―No large city high school is being organized today that does not provide wood-working and machine shops‖ (10). Langhorne-Middletown High School was a short distance from the city of Philadelphia. Urban schools at this time were providing services that Langhorne-Middletown High School could not, and it raised concerns for the local school board and the community, that its school was not up to par. 8
Deficiencies #7, #8 and #9 can all be tied together. Deficiency #7 was the absence of an
Art program at the high school. Due to the lack of classroom and qualified teacher, no art program existed at Langhorne-Middletown High School. At one point during the 1930-1931 school year, a teacher attempted to teach boys in a mechanical drawing course. Due to the lack of space, the course was coupled with other students who had a study period. This made for an unsuccessful course, and it was discontinued (―Deficiencies,‖ 11). This doubling up on classrooms is what made for Deficiency #8, too many Pupils per Teacher. The recitation classes by themselves were not too large, but due to the lack of classrooms, study hall students were added to classes, making the pupil to teacher ratio larger. The science and commercial rooms at
Langhorne-Middletown High School accommodated 18-20 students, leaving 162 other pupils to be divided among 4 rooms. With this breakdown, there was an average of 40 students per teacher per day. The school board argued that if study hall students were removed from the recitation rooms, the student load per teacher would have been normal. The North Central Association of
Colleges and Preparatory schools, an organization developed in 1895 to evaluate the quality of education at colleges and secondary schools, recommended 25 students as the maximum to a class and stated that no class should ever host more than 30 students during a given period.
However, Langhorne-Middletown High School in October of 1931 had 21 classes of more than
30 pupils (12-13). The overcrowded conditions also led to Deficiency #9, Inelastic Class
Schedule. Without a sufficient number of rooms and teachers, there were too few courses for the amount of students, and schedules became frozen. New students, or students who had failed a course, were not able to get into the class they needed the following year (14).
The tenth and final deficiency in Langhorne-Middletown High School was the
Restriction on Extra-curricular Activities. Extra-curricular activities at Langhorne included athletics, orchestra, chorus, all clubs, class organizations, assemblies, student council, dramatics, debating and school newspaper. The school board felt that these activities prepared students for 9
life in a democracy, made students increasingly self-directive, taught cooperation, increased school interest, fostered sentiment to law and order and developed special abilities such as initiative and leadership. The problem was that Langhorne-Middletown High School was missing both a gymnasium and an auditorium, without which many of these activities could not exist, or were made more difficult as a result (―Deficiencies,‖ 15-16).
Most of the problems mentioned above were due to enrollment trends and lack of available space. Besides what was put forth in the packet, health concerns were also a worry in the overcrowded high school. Scarlet fever outbreaks had happened several times at both
Langhorne-Middletown High School and Hulmeville School, which were the two buildings in the district that were said to be overcrowded (Middletown 65). The second page of the deficiencies document shows the enrollment numbers for each grade in October of 1931, and estimates the enrollment numbers for the following two years. In October of 1931, there were 201 students occupying Langhorne-Middletown High School, and it was projected that that number would rise to 220 and 250 the following two years, respectively. Due to the overcrowded conditions in the school, the board proposed a temporary solution of building a two-room addition to the existing building. Though no outright statement is put forth in the document, it appears that the board published this document to argue for a two-room addition. According to the board, this proposal would solve the problems of inadequate library space, home economics courses for the girls, art classes, pupil load per teacher, inelastic schedules and enlarge the extra-curricular activity program. Absent from the two-room addition was an assembly room, a gymnasium, an auditorium and the facilities needed for the industrial arts. Thus, the two-room addition was only a temporary expedient to the deficiencies in the school plant facilities. Even with the addition, the Langhorne-Middletown High School was still not providing everything that the school board felt it should. 10
After digesting the information received at the meeting on February 16, 1932, four days later the board passed a motion to have architect A. Oscar Martin, the man the school board had hired to make plans for a two-room addition, proceed with their development (Middletown 57).
However, the plans did not go as scheduled. The Langhorne and Middletown boards met a disagreement on the funding of the two-room addition. The addition was estimated to cost
$15,000, including all furnishings. This amount was beyond Middletown Township’s ability to finance, so they proposed that Langhorne share equally the burden of financing the project.
However, according to the joint board agreement, Middletown should have full responsibility because they owned the existing building, and the school was occupied by mostly Middletown township students (68). This argument delayed the building of the two-room addition, but the outcome of the argument is unfortunately not evident in the school board minutes. What is evident is that a few years later in 1936, the same architect, A. Oscar Martin, was again sought after to make an addition to the high school. This time the provision was for a six-room, two- floor addition to the eastern part of the existing high school, which included three classrooms, a basement with a cafeteria, and boiler rooms. This addition was a success, not having funding arguments like the previous plan, and was made possible by WPA funds under president Franklin
Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal policy (Middletown 189).
11
Chapter 3
Changing Scope of Education + School Consolidation Movement
The document Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown High School caused by Lack of
Class Rooms, Auditorium, and Gymnasium listed inadequacies that the local school was facing in
1931. The lack of adequate high school facilities was not just a problem facing Langhorne-
Middletown High School, but other high schools across Pennsylvania and the United States.
Inadequacies in schools were happening because the needs of schooling were changing.
According to the late James Bryant Conant, an educational reformer and former president of
Harvard University, a revolutionary transformation of the American high school took place from
1905-1930 (Conant, 2).
Following WWI, high school enrollments began to increase at an incredible rate. In
1905, only about nine percent of an age group graduated from high school, and only about four to five percent of an age group went on to college. By 1930, about forty-five percent of an age group finished high school, and students entering college rose to fifteen percent (Conant, 3). In
1910, around one million students were enrolled in public and private secondary schools. By
1920 that number rose to two and one half million students, four and one half million in 1930, and seven million by 1940 (Dawson, 19). In 1905 the curriculum in public schools was primarily an academic, college preparatory education. Few schools if any offered courses in areas such as home economics, art, music, or manual training. However, by 1930, the comprehensive high school was shaping up across America, with an education based half on academic courses and half on the aforementioned courses (Conant, 3).
The student population in American public schools began to then change as well. It went from a homogenous group of individuals all destined for college, to a heterogeneous group of individuals destined for all sorts of varied occupations (Conant, 13). More and more students 12
were coming from families of small farmers, mechanics and day laborers, which brought in a new realm of abilities, cultural backgrounds and educational needs. Not all of these students desired to go to college, but since they were in school, it was the responsibility of the school to provide for them. ―The high school was no longer regarded as a college preparatory institution. Its function was to prepare for life—life in the home, on the farm, in the shop, in business, in rural communities, villages, cities, and large urban centers‖ (Dawson, 19).
Education in the eyes of Americans had changed. Schools were now heavily depended on to prepare a diverse group of students for life and to solve social problems. ―The American people expect a great deal from their schools. They expect them to assist in preserving the integrity of the individual, in nourishing the underlying values of democracy, and in securing and maintaining world peace. The schools should combat cultural conflict, race hatred, ignorance, poverty, and crime. They should aid in increasing the income of individuals and families, in improving methods of production and marketing economic goods, and making wise use of material resources. They have major responsibilities in improving the general health of the people, in decreasing the accident rate, and in raising the standard of living. They are taken to task for the rising divorce rate, increasing juvenile delinquency, and the misspelled words and faulty punctuation of the secretary in the businessman’s office. The American people regard schooling as a remedy for practically all ills and as a means of resolving most of their difficult problems‖ (Dawson, 21).
From 1905-1930, American public schools were transforming. The reasons for these changes taking place have been hotly debated, but the fact is that more students were enrolling in public schools, there were greater variations in students’ abilities and career paths, and schools now had greater demands in meeting the needs of this new student population. In order to accommodate the changes in education, small inadequate school districts began to consolidate into larger school districts. Your School District; the Report of the National Commission on 13
School District Reorganization was a book published in 1948 that advocated the school district consolidation movement. Feeling that a proper reorganization of local school districts was one of the most important needs in elementary and secondary schools across the United States, the
National Commission on School District Reorganization was established in 1946, by both the
Rural Education Project of the University of Chicago and the Department of Rural Education of the National Education Association jointly. They published Your School District to address and advocate the imperative need for school district consolidation and reorganization throughout the country.
Educational programs, according to the National Commission on School District
Reorganization, were not sufficient to deal with the complex problems of life. One of the problems was that there were too many school districts of too small a size. In 1948 there were
103,000 local school units of administration in the United States. Some of the school districts did not even operate a school, but simply kept their administrative units for local neighborhood pride.
In most cases, the education offered was outmoded and contributed to a low quality of education.
These small ―common school districts‖ lacked the financial resources, equipment and personnel needed to provide for a quality educational program (Dawson, 16). The answer to these problems was to consolidate small rural school districts into larger administrative units. By doing so, school districts would operate more efficiently and be able to fund new comprehensive high schools.
The document Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown High School caused by Lack of
Class Rooms, Auditorium, and Gymnasium published by the Langhorne-Middletown Joint Board, is the first written primary evidence of shortcomings in the local high school caused by the changes taking place in education across the nation. The shortcomings at the Langhorne-
Middletown High School mirror the shortcomings in the schools mentioned in Your School
District, which necessitated school district consolidation across the country. 14
Chapter 4
Trends in General School Board Policies in Langhorne-Middletown Area
from 1945-1950
In 1950 Dr. Charles Boehm wrote a report entitled Trends in General School Board
Policies in Langhorne-Middletown Area with Special Emphasis upon Period Since 1945. Charles
Boehm was the Superintendent of schools in Bucks County from 1941-1956. He was also a building consultant to many school districts and parochial schools in several states, and as such, he established many cost saving measures for districts with which he worked. From 1956-1964
Boehm was the state superintendent of public schools, where he helped to consolidate 54 school boards into 13 districts. The purpose of his report was to make suggestions to the school board on how they could improve the educational program in their area, but his report also gave a brief history of important things that were going on in the Neshaminy area, which improved the quality of education over the years. The history of school district consolidation in the Neshaminy area was one thing mentioned a great deal in his report.
According to Dr. Boehm, from 1930 to 1944 many attempts were made by the joint boards to upgrade the facilities at the Langhorne-Middletown High School, but they had little success. This was his reasoning for the many failed attempts at upgrading, and the misguided criticism that the school board was apparently getting from the public: ―Several times since 1930, the local school boards attempted to erect a gymnasium. The original joint board agreement offered one obstacle, and a new one was not successfully negotiated until 1944. The constitutional limitations on the borrowing power and the low real estate assessments were serious handicaps to these two boards, as well as to other boards throughout the state. The court intervened to prevent still another method of building the gymnasium‖ (Boehm, 1-2). 15
According to Dr. Boehm in his report, a great deal of public criticism was directed against the school board due to their inability to provide the gymnasium and other secondary school facilities that the community thought were needed, in the period between 1930 and 1944:
―This agitation arose because the public was not adequately informed. What the public did not know was that the responsibility for inadequate facilities did not alone rest on the decisions of the joint board. In the first place the locally elected assessors, as elsewhere, ignored the state constitution in levying assessments. The constitutions recognize only assessments based upon
100% market value. Under that assumption, a 7% borrowing power limitation was placed upon the school boards. This limitation was on the actual real estate assessment. There has never been any doubt that if the assessors had tried to get a fair market value, these school boards could have provided much better facilities‖ (Boehm, 1-2). The legislators were also required to share in that responsibility, since ―they ignored the general inadequacy in buildings throughout the state and provided practically no assistance whatsoever. The school board’s responsibility for lack of facilities was due to their not giving the public adequate information, due to their unwillingness to negotiate a new contract, and also due to an unwillingness to provide more adequate facilities out of current revenue‖ (1-2). In 1937 the joint board sought to build a gymnasium through the State
Authority, but it ―did not become a reality and once more the physical plant improvement had to be postponed‖ (1-2).
After World War II there was a revival in interest on the part of the school boards in the
Neshaminy area, which led to many big accomplishments, the first of which was the addition of
Hulmeville and Langhorne Manor in the joint board agreement with the secondary school. The agreement did not encompass the junior high, but at the time this was considered a huge accomplishment because for 15 years, the boards of those areas had a great deal of friction between each other. Once this joint board agreement was negotiated, the approval of a bond issue was required in all of the four component board districts, in order to build a gymnasium or other 16
needed facilities (Boehm, 2). The flyer sent out by the Middletown Township School Board urged taxpayers to vote ―YES‖ for the School Bond Issue on November 6, 1945. ―The School
Boards of Middletown Township, Langhorne, Langhorne Manor and Hulmeville Boroughs, after several meetings with representatives of the State Department of Public Instruction, reached a unanimous decision that the most practical and economical solution for the education of the pupils in the higher grades of these four districts is to unite for the purpose of conducting a joint
Junior and Senior High School‖ (―School Bond Issue‖).
The flyer then went on to inform the voters of important issues and touch on possible concerns. The first issue addressed on the bond issue was how the tax rate would be affected for
Middletown townships citizens if the bond issue were approved. The school board assured
Middletown voters that the present taxes would not increase because of the six following reasons: it will save duplication of departments, teachers and services; the cost per pupil of operating the new school will be lower than that of the present schools for grades 9 to 12; it will lower the cost of operating the present 7th and 8th grades; Middletown Township’s share of the operating expenses of the joint school will be based on the number of our pupils in attendance; the new state law decreased state aid to small high schools and increased aid to larger joint high schools; and it will help prevent a sharp rise in tax rate due to new mandated teachers’ salary law because of larger state aid under the proposed joint school arrangement. The joint operation of the schools was not only positive, but considered imperative for the necessary construction of additional classrooms. Without it, Middletown Township would have to bear the entire cost of construction alone (―School Bond Issue‖).
Besides the financial benefit, the bond issue flyer explained that the joint operation of the schools would also benefit students in a numerous ways: they would have a wider choice of courses; additional experienced teachers would be employed; the elementary schools would improve by relieving the present overcrowded classrooms; the proposed new construction would 17
include a gymnasium as well as additional large and small classrooms; and ample provision would be made for physical education, health, recreational and social activities (―School Bond
Issue‖).
The final question proposed on the flyer was why the bond issue was present during the fall: interest rates for school bonds are less than two percent, which is the lowest rate ever available; the school board needs immediate approval of the bond issue in order to enter into discussions with the other boards regarding architectural plans and construction costs, since the money will not be borrowed until the contracts for construction are awarded; and if the bond issue is approved, the board will be in position to accept federal aid (―School Bond Issue‖). The request for this proposed bond issue had a good response from the public, for on November 6,
1945, 85% to 90% of the voters in the four districts approved the bond issues (Boehm, 2).
Based on the report from Dr. Boehm and the School Bond Issue, a great deal of information is revealed regarding school consolidation in the Neshaminy area. For one thing, the public was heavily influencing the educational program in the district. It is clear from Dr.
Boehm’s report that the public wanted better educational facilities, and this is why they criticized the board for not providing a gymnasium and other needed facilities. The public’s concern for education was also clearly seen in the vote on the bond issue, where 85 to 90% voted in support of the jointure of the four districts.
The documents also reinforce that the Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction had a strong influence on the consolidation process. The documents say that the school boards of the four districts of Middletown Township, Langhorne, Langhorne Manor Borough and Hulmeville
Borough met with the representatives of the State Department of Public Instruction, and made a unanimous decision that they would unite to conduct a joint junior and senior high school. The decision was partly a financial one, for the state laws gave more funding to larger joint high schools. These documents also show that the process of consolidation was slow. It started in 18
1922, but met a lot of problems along the way. Projects like the two-room addition in the 1930’s were sometimes prevented, and by 1946, though two more districts were added to the joint board agreement, Penndel and Lower Southampton Township were still not part of the jointure. It would take another four years to get all six districts together in the joint board agreement.
19
Chapter 5
Report and Recommendations on the Secondary School
After the bond issue’s vote of approval in November, the joint board of the four districts quickly published the Report and Recommendations on the Secondary School on December 16,
1946, in which the board spelled out the reasons for the report: ―The purpose of this report is to apprise the board of the school directors of some of the problems confronting the district, and to recommend temporary expedients and to suggest the necessity for long term planning‖ (―Report and Recommendations,‖ 1). The school district was facing multiple problems, such as shortcomings in the building, increased enrollments and time organization. The board came up with suggestions that might alleviate some of these problems right away, but they knew that long term planning was going to be a necessity.
If compared to the document published in 1931, Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown
High School caused by Lack of Class Rooms, Auditorium, and Gymnasium, the main problems facing the school were the same. Both documents dealt primarily with the fact that the building was overcrowded and inadequate. Health hazards were also apparent in the building in the publishing of both documents in 1931 and 1946. The similarities in the documents show us that little had been done in the fifteen years from the first document’s publishing to the second’s, to solve the problems that the school was facing. Student enrollment continued to rise, and as it did, more problems followed.
The first problem in the pamphlet was the inadequate rooms and overcrowded conditions.
They were said to be not only a hindrance to learning, but also a hazard to the students and teachers well being. The Langhorne-Middletown High School was constructed for only 250 pupils, but by 1946 it housed 500 students. At the time, pupil capacity was measured by taking the number of classrooms and multiplying it by 22. Twenty-two was seen as the average number 20
of students in a classroom where normal conditions existed. The number of students in a classroom was not to exceed or fall below this number. Unfortunately, by 1946 the high school had far exceeded these numbers. The graph below was taken from the Report and
Recommendations on the Secondary School. These graphs are important because they show us the extent of the overcrowded the conditions in the high school. In nearly every room in the building, there were more students than the recommended capacity. This was a definite fire hazard and health hazard. We know from school board minutes in the 1930’s that several outbreaks of scarlet fever arose because of overcrowded conditions in both the Hulmeville School and the Langhorne-Middletown High School, which caused the temporary closings of the school; it is no overstatement to say that these problems could have resurfaced (Middletown, 65).
Basement Floor Room Recommended Present Number Dimensions seating capacity Accommodations
101 (Sc. Lab.) 23’ x 30’ 35 39 102 (Home E.) 23’ x 30’ 25 27 105 (class rm) 21’ x 28’ 28 44
First Floor Room Recommended Present Number Dimensions seating capacity Accommodations
201 23’ x 30’ 35 47 202 23’ x 37.5’ 40 54 203 (library) 23’ x 30’ 30 30 205 (Typing) 21’ x 28’ 28 36
Second Floor Room Recommended Present Number Dimensions seating capacity Accommodations
301 23’ x 30’ 35 47 302 23’ x 30’ 35 42 303 23’ x 30’ 35 44 304 21’ x 26’ 26 34 305 21’ x 28’ 28 43
21
Besides the overcrowded conditions in these rooms, there were numerous other hazards.
According to the regulations set forth by the State Council of Education in the Department of
Public Instruction Bulletin Number 86, the heating and lighting in the basement floor were below standard. Rooms 101 and 105 also had tile and concrete floors, which were said to be dangerous to female teachers and students because of their dampness and coldness. Additionally, the lockers and coat racks in the basement corridor were hazardous. They were both a necessity, but they blocked the free passage of students. The law prohibited such obstructions in the hallway because they were considered a fire hazard (―Report and Recommendations,‖ 2).
The overcrowded conditions could be seen elsewhere as well. The cafeteria, room 103, could accommodate only 35 students at one time, yet 100 students ate their lunch during the lunch period. Students who could not fit in the cafeteria would eat their lunches in the home economics room or other classrooms throughout the building. Many other students left school to eat at restaurants in town because of the lack of space at the school. The teachers’ lounge area was also a problem. There were two teacher rooms 10’ x 10’ in size. According to the school board, these rooms did not provide the needed privacy or relaxation for teachers, which many other school systems were providing (―Report and Recommendations,‖ 2).
The document tells us that the girls’ toilets at the Langhorne-Middletown High School were unsatisfactory according to state requirements. While eleven water closets and two wash basins were required, the school only had seven water closets with one wash basin. The boys’ toilets were in the basement, while most of the boys’ classes were on the first and second floors.
This meant that boys had to travel down to the basement each time they wanted to use the bathroom. Since the basement floor already lacked space because of the lockers and coat racks in the walking areas, the boys traveling to the bathroom caused serious crowding in the basement between classes and at noon. Additionally, the means of exit from the basement did not meet the legal standards. The shower room was also said to be ―a disgrace and a dangerous health hazard‖ 22
and there was nearly no storage for school supplies such as books, tablets, maps, costumes, band
and orchestra instruments, and art supplies (―Report and Recommendations,‖ 2). The big
problem was in the drastic increase in settlement and school enrollment in the area. The following
is a list of population and enrollment data from the Report and Recommendations on the
Secondary School published in 1946:
General Population 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940
Hulmeville 418 454 468 491 582 694 Langhorne 728 801 895 1067 1147 1221 Langhorne Manor --- 222 170 207 397 477 *Sth Langhorne ------557 789 921 Middletown 2725 2631 2235 1365 2095 3136
Total 3871 4108 3768 3687 5010 6449
*South Langhorne became Penndel Borough in 1947
Total Net enrollment
1932 1934 1936 1938 1940 1942 1944 1946 Nov. 30, 1946
Hulmeville 173 165 184 101 202 192 172 154 107 Langhorne-Middle 583 672 610 639 712 702 657 680 691 Langhorne Manor ------20 23 18 27 26 28 29 Middletown 164 166 169 172 183 246 193 170 182 South Langhorne 130 130 144 149 148 132 132 126 119
Total 1050 1133 1127 1174 1263 1299 1180 1158 1128
23
Net Secondary School Enrollment
1932 1934 1936 1938 1940 1942 1944 1946 11/30/1946
Langhn-Middletown 203 256 254 277 331 323 293 311 487*
*Reorganized as an accredited junior-senior secondary school for the year 1946-1947
There are several important things we can infer from the data presented above. For one thing, the population that was served by the secondary school was growing tremendously from
1890 to 1946 when the article was published – a 66 percent increase in population over that time.
As the population grew, so did the enrollment of students, which was a big reason for the overcrowded conditions in the schools. The graph of net secondary enrollment begins with the year 1932, the same school year that the original document listing the ten school deficiencies was published. From 1932 to 1946, the Langhorne-Middletown High School enrollment went from
203 to 487. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the four districts of Hulmeville, Langhorne,
Langhorne Manor and Middletown met with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction and came up with the decision to reorganize the high school as a junior-senior high school for the
1946-1947 school year, which added 176 new junior high students to the school that year. This means that the high school population more than doubled from the first document’s publishing in
1931 to the second’s in 1946. Though the school’s population doubled, the size of the school did not. There were additions done during that span of time, but none were big enough for the amount of students, and the overcrowded conditions were growing and continuing to cause problems. Another important finding from the report was that the holding power of the secondary school was very weak. On average, 50 percent of students who enrolled in 9th grade dropped out prior to graduation. The report states, ―if the schools exist for the education of all the children 24
from the first through the twelfth grades, then we are failing in our responsibility‖ (―Report and
Recommendations,‖ 4).
In the secondary school in 1946, there were two major curricula: college preparatory and the commercial. The college prep curriculum included the traditional subjects such as English, history, science, mathematics and foreign language. The commercial curriculum was two-fold, with one part leaning toward secretarial work and the other toward salesmanship. The joint board claimed that there was not enough differentiation in the college prep curriculum for students with different academic interests and abilities. This was partly due to the overcrowded conditions of the school, making it difficult to divide classes into post high school vocational preference.
Another problem the school addressed was that a high percentage of the students at the school had no career goals, causing the students to flounder. The board felt that students had the perception that as long as they obtained a diploma, jobs and promotions would find their way to them, without mind to the quality of their work. The board greatly feared that this attitude would hinder their students in the future (―Report and Recommendations,‖ 5).
In 1946, over 90 percent of the girls at the secondary school were said to be assuming the responsibilities of homemaking, yet most of the girls could not take these courses because of the limited facilities at the secondary school. The same problem was happening with the industrial arts as well. Students were unable to enroll in the classes that were most valuable to them. This may have been the reason that 50 percent of students who enrolled in 9th grade dropped out before graduating. The school also provided the bare minimum in art and music education, and only had a physical education class without a proper health class. It was impossible for the school to broaden the curriculum in these areas with the inadequate facilities they possessed.
As a result, the school board made a number of proposals. The first solution was to adjust the schedule. The current scheduled day was six periods of fifty-five minutes, which had a length of five hours and thirty minutes. This, however, was thirty to forty minutes shorter than the majority 25
of schools in the commonwealth, so in order to keep up with other institutions, and because schools were gradually being required to assume larger roles in the education of children, the board proposed to rearrange the schedule. Their proposal was for seven fifty minutes periods, and to change the start time to 8:45 AM. The hope was that with seven periods, there would now be an assigned classroom for art classes, rather than having them meet in the hall. Additionally, well established classes could now be scheduled five days a week instead of four, giving teachers and students more opportunity to work on lessons, and reducing study hall assignments (―Report and Recommendations,‖ 5).
Another major point in the consolidation of the high school was the need for long term planning. The problems of the secondary school were largely due to population increases, but these increases were happening at the elementary levels as well. Students enrolled in the elementary schools would soon be enrolling in the high school, thus it was impractical to consider the problems of the secondary school as entirely divorced from the elementary schools. By reviewing enrollment data, the school board found that within three to four years, the secondary attendance would reach 550 pupils. If ninety percent of the pupils from the elementary schools continued through the twelfth grade, the enrollment by 1950 would be approximately 625 pupils.
If South Langhorne (Penndel) joined the joint board agreement and their students were added, the total enrollment was expected to be approximately 700 students. The following is a list of enrollment data from the elementary schools published in the Report and Recommendations on the Secondary School as of November 30, 1946:
First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Total Friends 26 27 32 85 Langhorne Grade 29 26 64 119 Edgehill 8 8 10 26 Parkland 32 36 33 35 20 156 Hulmeville 23 18 16 18 24 16 105 Langhorne Manor 12 5 8 4 29
Grand Total 101 94 99 86 70 80 520 26
Any drastic increase in enrollment would require the district to either construct new buildings or make split day sessions. The idea of split day sessions was not perceived positively, for it was believed to hurt the overall quality of education. Therefore, the school board made four final suggestions in order to establish a sound educational program for the future. The first solution was to use the present secondary school building as an elementary school. The second was to continue the use of the elementary school on Maple Avenue and Pine Street. The third was to close the Edgehill, Hulmeville, Langhorne Manor and Friends’ schools and transfer the pupils into the Pine Street School and the current secondary school building, which would save a considerable amount of money in maintenance and janitorial service. The final suggestion was to build a new secondary school, which would fit approximately seven hundred students.
27
Chapter 6
The Pennsylvania Economy League’s Report
In June of 1948, Penndel accepted membership into the joint board agreement (Boehm,
2). At this time, five of the six districts that made up the Neshaminy School District were jointly operating their schools and a staff of supervisors had been employed to make sure the program of each district in the joint agreement had unified aims and practices of instruction. In 1949, the joint board along with the board of school directors of Lower Southampton Township requested that a study be conducted by the Pennsylvania Economy League (PEL) to develop a long-range program for providing adequate school plant facilities for the community (PEL, 2). This was a landmark decision, as they were the first board in Bucks County to have an outside agency create a survey for better educational facilities (Boehm, 3). This suggests that the local school boards in the Neshaminy area were forward thinking compared to other districts in Bucks County. The survey was an in depth analysis of demographics, educational organization, school plant facilities, fiscal analysis and maps and graphs of the region commonly referred to as the Neshaminy area.
This document is the most important piece of primary evidence in the way of school district consolidation in the Neshaminy area, for after the publishing of this report, county superintendent
Charles Boehm wrote to the board of school directors in the Langhorne-Middletown area, urging them to adopt the plans set forth.
The first chapter of the report dealt with demographics and was titled The Area and Its
Industries and People. The Neshaminy area, located in the southwestern part of the county, was a rural 28 square mile area connected by a system of highways, making it easily accessible to any other part of the area (PEL, 3). This was important for the obvious reason that transportation to and from schools needed to be possible, and the available highways made the joint operation of 28
schools feasible. Less obvious but just as important was the effect that these highways would have on urban sprawl and population growth.
U.S. Highway Route 1 passed through the area in a northeasterly direction. In 1949, when the report was published, U.S. 1 was the main highway connecting Philadelphia to New
York City, and ran through Trenton, New Jersey, which was only nine miles from Langhorne
Borough. Other highways passing through the Neshaminy area were state highways 213, 432,
413, 532 and 132. Route 413 was a major highway in Eastern Pennsylvania, running directly from Bristol to Easton, two major commercial centers in Pennsylvania at this time. The accessibility of the area made it susceptible to urban sprawl. Urban sprawl is low density, auto- dependent land development that takes place on the edges of urban centers. Urban sprawl usually takes place in undeveloped land or farms, transforming the landscape into single-family homes, commercial office parks and retail stores (Soule, xv). Urban sprawl was likely to occur, considering that the area was rural, sandwiched between Trenton and Philadelphia, and was accessible due to the highways. With urban sprawl would come an influx of population and the need for the joint board to plan long-range in terms of its school plant needs. The Pennsylvania
Economy League urged that the six districts become one because the system of highways made each part in the Neshaminy area easily accessible to one another, making unification for the purpose of schooling sensible; however, they were also clearly aware how this rural area could be affected by urban sprawl, because the next two sections of the report dealt with population data and new home construction in the area.
Chapter one of the PEL report discusses the population trends in the area based on reports from the Federal Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of Vital Statistics of the State Department of
Health, the school records of enrollment and census enumeration, and other data related to home development in the area. The Federal Census reports showed that a drastic increase in population occurred from 1890 to 1940. The total population increase in that fifty-year period was 147.2 29
percent (see table 1 on p. 40). The Bureau of Vital Statistics also found that birth rates in the rural part of Bucks County (all places in the county except for Bristol Borough) from 1938 to
1944 increased at a particularly rapid rate (see table 2 on p. 41). However, the most reliable data given in the report in regard to impact on school facilities were the total number of school age children, children ages 6 to 16. In the ten-year period from 1939 to 1949, the total number of school age children in the area rose from 1,394 to 1,830 (see table 4 on p. 42). The total enrollment went from 1,418 in 1939 to 1,635 in 1949.
Year Total Enrollment 1939-40 1,418 1940-41 1,449 1941-42 1,482 1942-43 1,442 1943-44 1,416 1944-45 1,401 1945-46 1,372 1946-47 1,474 1947-48 1,548 1948-49 1,635
This appears as a flaw because in 1939 there would be more students enrolled than were of school age. This must only be a glitch in the criteria used in categorization. The criteria was children ages 6 to 16, which means that in 1939 there was probably a handful of students who were a year or two removed from this age bracket, but still were served by the local schools.
Another reason for the mix up could be that census enumerators, created from parents’ responses, frequently report incorrectly the exact year of students’ birth (PEL, 4). 30
Along with a steady increase in children of school age, there was also a steady increase in home construction. The graph below, taken from the PEL report, shows the home construction completed in the Neshaminy area since 1940, and the estimated construction to be completed by
1951. From 1940 to 1949, 521 single-family homes were built in the Neshaminy area, and at the time of the report in 1949, 675 more single-family homes were expected to be built within the following three years.
Of all the school districts within the Neshaminy area, Lower Southampton Township saw the most new home development. Three hundred homes had been built there from 1940 to 1949, and 450 more were scheduled to be built before 1952. For this reason the PEL predicted that the most rapid population increase for the years immediately ahead would be in Lower Southampton
Township. After analyzing data from numerous sources, they went on to say that ―no one of these sources shows any sudden spectacular increase or decline in population numbers; nor is there any indication that the foreseeable future will suddenly create a need of a large school building program resulting from a large and sudden increase in the number of children in the 31
area‖ (PEL, 6). What the PEL could not have predicted in the report was that two years later, a man named Bill Levitt was about to build the largest planned suburban community in U.S. history, right in Middletown Township. This created a sudden and drastic population increase, which contrasted what the PEL predicted.
Bill Levitt, one of the fundamental visionaries and builders of Levittown, was aware that the building of a U.S. steel plant in Lower Bucks County in 1951 would attract an influx of new families to the area. Taking advantage of this and returning GI’s, he constructed the largest planned suburban community in United States history. He built 17,311 houses at an extremely rapid pace – one complete house every twelve minutes (Mullane, 1A). Of those homes, 4,562 single-family homes were built in Middletown Township. It would appear that this immediate growth coupled with the already overcrowded conditions in the Langhorne-Middletown schools had to have effected the school consolidation in the district. However, Levittown began building in 1951, and by that time the Neshaminy School District had already been formed and was operating as one district. This is not to say that Levittown’s development did not affect the
Neshaminy School District or other local school districts; however, its effect was probably felt much later during the ―baby boom‖ era.
Chapter two in the PEL report addressed the current educational organization in the
Neshaminy area. Since 1922, a high school program had been operated jointly by Langhorne
Borough and Middletown Township, and for a short time prior to June of 1948, the schools in
Langhorne Borough, Middletown Township and Hulmeville Borough operated jointly. The schools in Lower Southampton, Langhorne Manor and Penndel Borough operated separately. In
June of 1948, Langhorne Borough, Middletown Township, Langhorne Manor Borough,
Hulmeville Borough and Penndel Borough established a joint agreement for all grades from one through twelve, effective for the 1948-1949 school year. At the time of the PEL’s report, Lower
Southampton Township was not yet part of the joint board agreement. The township differed in 32
its organization as it retained grades 7 and 8 as part of its elementary school organization, while in the other five districts, the elementary school program ended at grade six.
The placement of elementary schools was another problem addressed in the report.
Children who lived within a one and a half mile radius of their elementary school were permitted to walk to school. With the current arrangement of elementary schools, the schools were clustered together and boundaries overlapped. The Langhorne-Middletown High School was originally constructed in 1926 as a consolidated elementary school, but had only ever been used as a jointly operated high school. It could not accommodate all of the students in the Neshaminy area. During the 1947-1948 school year, the Langhorne-Middletown High School had an enrollment of 465 students in seventh through twelfth grade. In that same year, 103 students from the area attended high schools outside the area due to the overcrowded conditions. Those high schools included Abington Township, Bensalem Township, Cheltenham Township and Lower
Moreland Township (PEL, 11).
Chapter three of the PEL report dealt with the present school plant facilities in 1949, and the quality of each building. Each facility was carefully evaluated in the following categories: school grounds, the main structure, instructional centers, general service rooms, administrative facilities, service systems, and sanitary facilities. Each category was then ranked as A-Excellent,
B-Good, C-Fair, D-Poor, E-Missing or Unsatisfactory. These standards were not arbitrary, but rather developed from multiple valid organizations, including the School Plant Division of the
Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction, the Housing Section of the United States Office of Education, the National Council on Schoolhouse Construction, and the American Association of School Administrators. Each grade meant the following, in practical terms:
A - Few or no improvements needed
B - Certain desirable facilities are found inadequate or completely lacking. Such a
building often can be made into an excellent one without undue expenditure of money. 33
C – Deficiencies are more numerous and usually more serious. Usually many of these
deficiencies can be corrected with relative economy.
D – So inadequate that its continued use is hardly justifiable but may be used as a
temporary expediency. However, plans should be made for its early abandonment.
E – Should be abandoned at the earliest possible date.
(*Table 12 on p. 43 shows how the six districts and their schools were graded.)
Overall the facilities in the area were poor according to the standards set forth by the aforementioned organizations. One noted problem was that the schools grounds were too small.
For an elementary school, a minimum of five acres plus an additional acre for every 100 students was needed, and for a secondary school, a minimum of 10 acres plus an additional acre for every
100 students was needed. None of the schools in the Neshaminy area met this requirement. An additional complaint in the report was that few of the schools had pleasant surroundings; one of the schools actually bordered a cemetery (PEL, 15).
The Pennsylvania Economy League commended the community’s schools for the condition of their sanitary facilities, given the age of the buildings. Each building had washbowls, soap dispensers and paper towels. However, there were other major problems that overshadowed this, especially the tremendous amount of fire hazards. The schools in Neshaminy area had wooden floors, corridors, stairways and framing, which made schools highly susceptible to fire. Additionally, boiler rooms had very little safety provisions, fire extinguishers were not up to date or uninspected, and other problems were noticeable in the way oil was stored. Taken together, these made for dangerous fire hazards in the schools. Other complaints were that schools were dark, gloomy, lacking space and out of date. The Friends School, one of the schools operated by Langhorne, was 99 years old in 1949 and was said to be no longer suitable for usage
(PEL, 14-24). 34
Of all the buildings inspected, the Langhorne-Middletown High School building was given the closest examination in the report. The PEL found that the design of the two-story brick building was such that additions or alterations of the existing structure would have been difficult and not cost effective. It was also not well adapted for the administration and operation of a modern program for secondary education (PEL, 24).
The offices at Langhorne-Middletown High School were also not up to standard. They were not well located, did not provide proper accommodations for waiting visitors, there was not enough work space or filing facilities, and there was no provision for facilities of supervising, counseling and administrative personnel. The music room was problematic because it was housed in a small classroom devoid of any acoustical treatment, thus disturbing nearby classrooms (PEL, 25). The Langhorne-Middletown High School also had no gymnasium or auditorium, and the cafeteria could only accommodate 50 students. The library was a converted classroom with tables and chairs and accommodated only 36 students. There was also a lack of storage space, and although most of the schools examined had enough sanitary and bathroom facilities, the high school did not (29). All things accounted for, the facilities at the Langhorne-
Middletown High School and the other schools in the six districts were lacking and needed to be changed immediately.
The fourth chapter of the PEL report was titled Fiscal Analysis. The report notes that the cost of schooling in Pennsylvania had been drastically rising in the ten-year period before the report was published. Much of this was due to the increased salaries of teachers and other professionals in schools. With that in mind, it was important for the district to be cost conscious, and plan for the future. Since the districts were well beyond the recommended pupil to teacher ratio, any decisions to save money would need to be arranged in school plant facilities and organization, not in hiring or firing personnel. 35
The final two chapters of the PEL report were the most important. Chapter 5 was the findings and conclusions of the report, and chapter 6 was the recommendations given. The
Pennsylvania Economy League started their suggestions by saying that constructive steps have been taken by the districts within the area to consolidate the multiple school districts into one administrative unit with one unified educational program. However, the districts were in need of immediate action. Every section of the district was in dire need of a well-planned program of school plant utilization, renovation and replacement. This need was not just due to an increase in school age children; rather, these needs in the way of outdated and outmoded facilities had existed for several years (PEL, 33). Big changes were needed to meet the present and future needs of the district.
The present high school was inadequate, and did not make sense to renovate. The PEL suggested that rather than spending money to update the school, they should begin to make plans for a new high school building which could accommodate up to 600 pupils and could be easily expandable. As soon as the new high school was completed, they suggested that the present high school be converted to an elementary school. Given its size and geographically centered location in the Neshaminy area, it could immediately replace the Friends School, the Hulmeville School, the Langhorne Manor School, the Pine Street School and the annex of the Parkland School. Each of these buildings was considered so inadequate that renovations made no sense economically.
The Pennsylvania Economy League suggested that for a long-range plan for the elementary grades, the districts should consider having only three elementary centers. One was the present high school, one in Lower Southampton, and one in the southern part of Middletown Township.
Besides the school plant changes, other organization changes were suggested. All children in grades seven and eight that were being schooled in elementary schools needed to be attending high school. Attending a high school was said to have superior advantages for these youngsters. 36
In order for these changes to be made feasible, the six school districts in the study needed to complete a joint board agreement for the entire educational program, grades kindergarten through twelve. The PEL also suggested that they be under joint supervision and administration in order to develop a long-range plan for the future. To undertake these endeavors individually would be impractical, for none of the districts were large or wealthy enough to implement this program alone. The joint board would also need aid from sources like the State School Building
Authority to help them fund this endeavor. The plans to erect a new high school would probably reach $1,000,000, but given other studies done by the PEL, the savings in operational costs matched the increase in capital to provide such buildings.
37
Chapter 7
Conclusion
The Pennsylvania Economy League’s report was distributed to all board members and to any interested citizens. Approximately 3,000 copies of the study were circulated in the community and its contents were discussed at school board meetings for the next four months
(Neshaminy, 14). In January of 1950, County Superintendent Dr. Charles Boehm wrote to the school board urging them to adopt the Neshaminy Plan proposed in the PEL report. The
Neshaminy Plan added Lower Southampton Township to the joint board agreement, and suggested that the six districts in the plan complete an agreement for the entire educational program from grades K-12, and also for the joint supervision and administration of their districts.
In the spring of 1950, the Lower Southampton Township Board began to attend board meetings with the five other districts already in the joint board agreement (Hulmeville,
Langhorne, Middletown, Penndel and Langhorne Manor). At these meetings, consideration was given to the possibility of carrying out the Neshaminy Plan by adding Lower Southampton
Township to the joint board agreement. The attorney for the joint board was directed to prepare a joint agreement based on the discussions at the meetings, and in May of 1950 the joint board agreement was adopted and became effective for the 1950-1951 fiscal year. The Neshaminy
School District was now a reality, and immediately, the Neshaminy School Board began to create plans for a new high school building.
The process of consolidation was a long and slow process in the case of the Neshaminy
School District, but it was also a forward thinking one. It started in 1922 when the school boards of Middletown and Langhorne came together for the purpose of operating a joint high school.
The interesting part of this was that it was one of the first joint boards in Eastern Pennsylvania.
The school board was also the first in Bucks County to have an outside agency, the Pennsylvania 38
Economy League, make a comprehensive survey of its building needs. Taken together, the school boards in the Neshaminy area were forward thinking, compared to other school boards within the county and state.
The process of school consolidation in the Neshaminy area had many influences, including the fact that the facilities were inadequate. This was a recurring theme throughout history, evidenced in school board minutes and documents published by the school board and other organizations. The public wanted better educational facilities for the community, as did the school board and the State Department of Public Instruction, whose influence were also evident.
From early in the 1930’s, the State Department of Public Instruction was meeting with the school boards of Langhorne and Middletown. They had set standards for the districts and also given them advice on consolidation in order to increase the quality of the educational program throughout the district.
Another major theme was the national movement for consolidation, and the changes in the demand for secondary education. As noted in Chapter 3, after WWI more and more students were continuing their education into high school. The student population also became more diverse. As a result, small high schools with a strictly academic curriculum were replaced by comprehensive high schools, offering a number of diverse courses and that were also much larger in size. It was expensive to offer all of the courses needed in this new era of schooling, so school districts began to consolidate in order to make the needed changes. Neshaminy High School was one of these high schools. 39
Table 1: Population Trends Shown by Federal Census Reports 40
Table 2: Number of Live Births and Rates per Thousand of Total Population By Place of Residence in Rural Bucks County, 1937 to 1944 41
Table 4: Children of School Age Over 10-Year Period (Ages 6 to 16 Inclusive) As Shown By School Census Reports 42
Table 12: School Plant Evaluation Scores on Seven Major Items of the League’s Score Card 43
References
Boehm, Charles. Trends in General School Board Policies in Langhorne-Middletown Area with
Special Emphasis Upon Period Since 1945. Doylestown, 1950. Print.
"Building a Levittown." Welcome to Levittown, PA. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
Conant, James B. The Revolutionary Transformation of the American High School. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1959. Print.
Dawson, Howard Athalone. Your School District; the Report of the National Commission on
School District Reorganization. Washington: Dept. of Rural Education, National
Education Association of the United States, 1948. Print.
Deficiencies in Langhorne-Middletown High School Caused by Lack of Class Rooms,
Auditorium, and Gymnasium. Langhorne Middletown School Board, 1931. Print.
"Dr. Charles Boehm, 82 - Morning Call." Featured Articles From The Morning Call. 12 Mar.
1985. Web. 03 Nov. 2010. 12/news/2454358_1_bucks-county-school-boards-summer-term>. Middletown Township School Board. School Board Minutes. 1930-1936. Print. Mullane, J.D. "Developer Levitt Dies." Bucks County Courier Times [Levittown, PA] 30 Jan. 1994: 1A+. Print. Neshaminy School District. A Study of Conditions Bearing Upon the Construction of a New High School. Langhorne, PA, 1950. Print. Report and Recommendations on the Secondary School. Langhorne: Langhorne Borough, Middletown Township, Hulmeville Borough, Langhorne Manor Borough Joint, 1946. 1- 7. Print. 44 Soule, David C. Urban Sprawl: a Comprehensive Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006. Print. The Southeastern Division of the Pennsylvania Economy League. A Study of the School Plant Facilities of the Neshaminy Area of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Six School Districts Study Their School Plant Needs On a Long-Range Basis. Philadelphia, PA, 1949. Print. Why You Should Vote "YES" for the School Bond Issue on November 6, 1945. Middletown Township: Middletown Township School Board, 1945. Print. 45 ACADEMIC VITA OF EDWARD E. TERMYNA III Edward E. Termyna III 301 Penncrest Drive Langhorne, PA 19047 [email protected] Education: Bachelor of Science Degree in Secondary Education, Penn State University, Fall 2010 Minor in History Honors in Secondary Education Thesis Title: School Consolidation and the Beginnings of the Neshaminy School District Thesis Supervisor: David A. Gamson Related Experience: Philadelphia Urban Seminar Summer 2008 Hollidaysburg Area Junior High School Pre-service Student Teacher 2/22/2010 – 4/9/2010 Institute at Palazzo Rucellai, Florence Italy International Study Abroad Program Summer 2010 Awards: President’s Freshman Award Dean’s List (Fall 2006, Spring 2007, Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Summer 2010 Golden Key International Honors Society Alpha Lambda Delta National Honors Society National Society of Collegiate Scholars Education Achievement Scholarship; 3rd place Schreyer Ambassador Travel Grant Presentations/Activities: English Practice Partner for ESL Graduate Students Bible study leader