The Road to Consolidation

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Like all Middleborough school districts, District 3 (the Green) covered a wide area stretching west to the Wading Place at East Main Street and the Nemasket River, north to Thompson, Fuller and Plympton Streets, east along Plymouth Street to and including Short Street, and south along Wood Street nearly to Sachem Street. For the education of all children residing in this area, the Green School was responsible.

The Green, as a one-room schoolhouse, operated as an “ungraded” or “mixed” grade school, where students ranging in age from 5 to 15 and older were organized by ability rather than age or grade. Because these one-room schoolhouses existed only outside Middleborough center following the early 1850s, they also came to be known in local parlance as “suburban schools.”

Typically these schools had a higher proportion of girls and younger children as older children and boys were frequently needed to help with the operation of the family farm. In its first full year of operation (1872-73), however, the Green School was an anomaly for the class that year consisted solely of boys. Perhaps because of this, it was reported that there was “great room for improvement.”

In 1888, Superintendent of Schools Fitts well elaborated the challenges of the Green and other mixed grade schools in Middleborough:

…They are as deserving of honorable mention as any other, and perhaps more so when we consider the long distances that many of the pupils have to come, the oft detention at home to work, the many grades of all ages which most of them have, and the lack of enthusiasm which must needs be with small classes. Yet were you to ask me to take you to some of the most successful schools in town, it would be my privilege to take you to some of these schools.

By 1914, Massachusetts still had 800 one-room school houses, of which 13 were located in Middleborough, and the movement was for consolidation into larger more centralized schools. Not only did consolidation promote better grading; the inclusion of special branches such as drawing, music and nature study; higher retention of skilled teachers; and the conservation of resources; but it most importantly was believed to improve the overall quality of the education provided. “There is much value in such a plan and it would be practical with sufficient school accommodations at the Centre for this town to adopt,” reported Superintendent Bates at the time. As late as 1929, Middleborough still operated 12 one-room schoolhouses, the most of any town in the state, a not surprising circumstance given the physical extent of the town.

While the Middleborough School department had begun looking at the consolidation of Middleborough’s schools by closing outlying suburban schools as early as 1895, it was ultimately the overcrowding in the these schools which would initiate educational change in the early twentieth century. Ironically, despite the rapid growth of the town in the latter half of the nineteenth century, overcrowding initially was not a problem in the suburban schools. Superintendent Fitts felt in 1887 that the suburban schools, including the Green, were sufficient to well accommodate pupils. “The out-districts have plenty of room for all the pupils who attend.” Indeed, the sole school to confront crowding issues was South Middleborough.

A second factor in the eventual consolidation of Middleborough’s schools was the desire to create a shorter elementary course. Until the early 1900s, the elementary school course in Middleborough consisted of nine grades, all of which (outside Middleborough center) were housed in a single ungraded school. Superintendent Bates became increasingly dissatisfied with this arrangement and recommended an eight-year course of study for students before entering the high school. “I believe with a shorter course better application on the part of the pupils would be gained and less of dawdling would be noticeable in the schoolrooms.”

The situation at South Middleborough, coupled with the desire to establish an eight-year elementary program eventually combined in a single solution which began to see ninth graders sent to school at Middleborough center. Beginning in 1905, students from South Middleborough began attending the 9th grade at the central schools in order to reduce crowding in their school. This solution was not preferable however, as it split the 9th grade between the central schools and the suburban schools. “I wish it could be arranged,” wrote Superintendent Bates in 1906, “that all the pupils in the ninth grades could take that year in the Central School, as I think more would continue the work in the High School and a greater uniformity would result in having all the ninth grade pupils under the direct supervision of one teacher, besides giving more time to the other grades in the Suburban Schools.” Bates was still urging the eight-grade plan in 1910 both as a means of improving the general level of education and as of reducing crowding in the suburban schools and he argued that 9th grade students from the largest suburban schools, including the Green, should attend school at Middleborough Center. In 1912, Bates went one step further and formally recommended that all suburban schools be reduced to seven grades and 8th and 9th graders sent to the central schools “as soon as increased school accommodations will permit.”

Though the Green had long avoided the problem of overcrowding which had particularly troubled the South Middleborough School, by 1913 the number of scholars was so great that a temporary relief plan was required. During this period, the Green would have the largest enrollment of any suburban school and by 1917 its classes numbered more than the other three East Middleborough schools (Waterville, Soule and Thompsonville) combined. Residents of the district met on November 14, 1913, to discuss the crowded condition of the school and petitioned the School Committee for a solution. Superintendent Bates initially recommended the reduction in the number of grades at the Green to reduce crowding, but due to limited space in the central schools, this solution was not immediately practicable. Others recommended that use of the First Congregational Church’s chapel building be requested, but this solution was not financially feasible as it would have necessitated two teachers as the class would be divided between the two structures. Ultimately

this congestion problem was solved for the time by the division of the school into two sections – a grammar and a primary – on the one session plan.

The grammar section [of 25 pupils] attends in the morning from 8.20 to 12.15 and the primary section [also of 25 pupils] in the afternoon from 1.15 to 4, the first grade being dismissed at 3.30.

Each section comprises four grades. By this plan the cost of transportation of the two upper grades to the School Street school at one time considered was avoided.

The plan has many obvious advantages and the conditions in this district make it a practical one.

Only part of the school is in the room at the same time thus giving better conditions as to air. The school day is extended one hour and a quarter thus giving the teacher that amount of extra time for work with the pupils. Under this plan more time is gained, amounting to more than a day a week – longer recitation periods are possible, more instruction for the individual pupils can be given, the primary grades are given more attention and better work in every study and greater progress will be possible.

The plan is pleasing to the people and has the approval of the teacher.

It seems to fit the situation in an ideal manner.

With a high number of pupils, this grading plan was continued through 1915 at the Green and was so successful that it was implemented at Rock School in 1915 and Fall Brook in 1916 when those schools began to experience overcrowding of their own.

Because of the growing numbers of schoolchildren within each district in East Middleborough, Superintendent Bates proposed the creation of a centrally located school to replace the Green, Thompsonville, Soule and Waterville Schools. Bates suggested a “three or four room building, centrally located, [which] could accommodate the present enrollment in three graded schools.” The new school would feature graded classes, “large playground, garden for agricultural work, manual training rooms, and pupils having the services of the different supervisors transported by motor vehicles or on electric cars.” Additionally, the anticipated salary expense was expected to be about 25 less than the town presently paid for four separate schools. While Bates believed that “this seems to be the only solution financially and educationally for the best interests of the suburban districts,” the wartime conditions prevailing in 1917 made any change impossible.

Finally, in 1919, crowding at the Green School was somewhat lessened when the 7th, 8th and 9th grade students were bussed to classes at the School Street School. With fewer students, the two-session plan in operation since 1914 was abandoned and the full-day plan resumed. In the early 1920s, the sixth grade was also transferred to the central schools, leaving the Green with just five grades. A permanent solution to the rural school issue, however, was contingent upon solving crowding at Middleborough center which could only be accomplished through the construction of a new school. Additionally, because of the cost of transporting upper level Green students to the center ($1,560 in 1923), periodically the thought of retaining them at the Green was considered though it would have once more led to crowding there.

In September, 1929, under Superintendent J. Stearns Cushing, the three remaining schools serving East Middleborough - the Green, Soule and Waterville - were reorganized as a district or “unit of three buildings containing two grades each; grades one and two at the Green, three and four at Soule, and five and six at Waterville. Pupils are transported direct to the buildings eliminating the dangers of children walking on highways.” Superintendent of Schools J. Stearns Cushing believed the change improved the conditions in each school, and made for a more economical operation. “The educational values gained I believe are self evident. Pupils in these buildings are at the present time in a much more advance[d] stage in the work of the grade than in previous years. Their associates are of the same age. Their classes are large enough to give the children the valuable spirit of friendly competition with the classmates….Equipment is centralized and therefore administration is more economical for duplication may be eliminated.”

The Green School was not reopened in September 1941 due to the small enrollment, and the remaining first and second grade pupils were transferred to the central schools.