WYOMING NOTEBOOK: The vanishing act of Powell schools

Posted 8/6/15

I’m referring to the demolition site inside the fences at Third and Clark streets in Powell, where the school district has contracted to raze what has been known in recent years as the Powell Middle School. A newly-constructed middle school, the …

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WYOMING NOTEBOOK: The vanishing act of Powell schools

Posted

My fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade school years are crashing down around me.

They’re crashing down around you, too, but probably you don’t measure it the same way.

I’m referring to the demolition site inside the fences at Third and Clark streets in Powell, where the school district has contracted to raze what has been known in recent years as the Powell Middle School. A newly-constructed middle school, the latest in school facilities commissioned in Powell with state funds, will debut with the opening of the 2015-16 school year in a matter of weeks.

With the wrecking ball reducing the middle school to a pile of rubble, I’m struck with the changing face of the school footprint in Powell. I’d have a hard time showing my 8-year-old granddaughter where I went to school.

While I wasn’t looking, the physical presence of virtually my entire school experience has disappeared. Only one building of the half dozen or so buildings where I hung my hat during 12 years of public education (1946-1958) will remain standing as the new school year opens this fall.

Not converted to another use. They’re all gone.

The one survivor in my case is Parkside School. Parkside opened in the fall of 1949, and I was among the then fourth-graders to attend in the very first year of the school’s existence.

We were at Parkside for only one year. Powell’s elementary education was organized along the model of Grades 1 to 4 in one building at the time. Now, of course, Powell elementary schools are organized with K through Grade 5 in one building.

Parkside introduced the so-called neighborhood concept of elementary education. For our first three years of school, we had attended Eastside Grade School, Powell’s first school building, and one that has long since vanished from its previous location on East Third Street.

When the fifth grade rolled around in 1950, we were back to the main campus and “senior” elementary school.  They didn’t call it that, but in those days the fifth and sixth grades were housed and taught together in a confederation inserted between “primary” elementary education (Grades 1 to 4) and junior high school (Grades 7 and 8).

The fifth and sixth grade building is one that is being knocked down now. It was at the east end of what has most recently served as the Powell Middle School. I can’t remember how it was separated from junior high (Grades 7-8), but the west end of the building was for the seventh and eighth graders. It is getting the Humpty-Dumpty treatment, too.

The building where I attended Powell High School (1955-1958) is long gone from the scene.  When reference is made these days to the “old” Powell High School, many flash back to the now-demolished three-story building on Evarts Street which was replaced in 2008 by the present high school on East Seventh Street.

They don’t even know of the “old, old” Powell High School of my day. When we  graduated from junior high, we stepped about 50 feet to the west and entered Powell High School. The building, anchoring the long line of school buildings that distinguished three blocks of East Third Street, actually faced Clark Street between Third and Fourth.

It came some years after the opening of the Evarts Street high school in 1960. The site was reclaimed, planted in grass and has been used as a middle school practice football field in recent years.

The “old, old” PHS contained a cafeteria, a gymnasium and a stage with auditorium seating. It was a kindly, intimate and spirited place.

Reminiscences about what  was wouldn’t be complete without recalling the rest of the East Third Street lineup of school buildings no longer with us. The classic Powell High School Gymnasium, one of the finest of its kind when it opened in 1949, has been reduced to keepsake bricks.  It stood near the intersection of Third and Evarts streets, soon to be the grounds where middle-schoolers will spread their wings.

Also gone from the East Third Street schoolhouse row is the “White House,” the former school district administration building that sat east of the gymnasium. It was the last in the line, near the corner of Third and Ferris streets.

I count as losses from my Powell school years two more buildings — or one coupled into two— the Natatorium-Auditorium. They came into being in the mid-1950s, located on Evarts Street, just off the Third Street schoolhouse row, and were fixtures of the school complex until they were retired 50 years later. The natatorium was where Gene Dozah ushered in a tradition of competitive swimming excellence, and the auditorium was the proud home to school drama and musical departments for 50 years. Our PHS Class of 1958 can remember back to one of the first commencements in that auditorium.

Some will question the building demolitions, citing that “where I come from, they’re still going to school in buildings 150 years old.”

I’m not one to criticize the removal and replacement of school facilities as wasteful.

In each case, there were building issues or growth demands that would be more costly to address and correct than to build new. I accept that the delivery of quality education is ever-changing.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss old friends.

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