News Articles: Stoney Creek High School

Recent Article in School Construction News-July/August 2002

New high school will receive an ‘area’ name

The Observer & Eccentric/ THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1998

BY SHARON DARGAY
STAFF WRITER
The Rochester school board will keep hands off a policy that requires the district to name high schools after locations. Officials Monday voted 6-1 to keep guidelines that specify “places or things” for elementary school names; “national figures” for middle school names and “streets or locations” for high school names. It will instruct the district’s naming committee to meet one more time, follow current policy and recommend a title for the high school under construction at Sheldon and Tienken roads. Stoney Creek favored. The name Rochester Stoney Creek High School, which the committee suggested earlier this year, is likely to stick. A board subcommittee reconsidered the district’s name policy over the summer to determine if it was too restrictive. Board member Darlene Janulis says it is. She wanted to change the regulation before sending it back to the district naming committee, a group that includes parents, staff and board members. Janulis was a member of the committee, which recommended the board name its new high school in honor of Stoney Creek. “We already have a Stoney Creek School. We’re celebrating its 150th anniversary this year,” she noted. The one-room school house is located in the Rochester Hills historic district and used in conjunction with social studies and history lessons. Rochester elementary school classes take field trips to the building for hands-on learning and extended workshops. Janulis also opposed the name because it sounds similar to drug-related slang words “stoner” and “stoned.” “I’m disappointed they didn’t broaden the scope of the policy,” she said. Janulis pointed out that some residents want to name the new high school after prominent local individuals, including long-time English teacher Ray Lawson. The current policy excludes that possibility. But Jeff Russell said the policyis broad enough. June Jacobson also pointed out that policies from other school districts were “more definitive, allowing less creativity” than Rochester’s school name regulations.


Stoney Creek: Rochester area’s newest school honors its first
The Observer & Eccentric/ SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2000
BY LIZ GOLDING
As the school year begins, we are looking at the opening of the third high school in the Rochester community. The burgeoning population has outgrown one, then two high schools. The name of the newest addition for our youth is Stoney Creek High School. If you will take a trip with me to our past, we explore the first school in our area, which, by the way, was Stoney Creek School! According to research from “A Lively Town” this school was a log building, which was built on James Graham’s farm in 1821. The book goes on to say that “in 1823 Mr. Farmington taught reading in the Alexander Graham house in Rochester” and “two years later Stoney Creek children started school in a plank house” where John Chapman taught them.” There was a log schoolhouse built in “1821- 1826 near Rochester and Auburn Roads” and in 1828 Cyrus Chipman and his wife lived in this house. “In 1836 a new school was built a mile from the old one.” When we look today at millages and the need for buses, building maintenance and support for all the extracurricular activities think of Avon Township in 1848. It was then that “electors voted to raise fifty cents for each child in the township from four to eighteen years old, to be used for support of the schools.” In 1828 Gad Norton and William Burbank built the first building erected for school purposes on the northwest corner of Walnut and Third Street and Miss Maria LeRoy taught ten pupils that summer. It seems the buildings were moved around as this frame building was later moved to Main Street and Dr. Rollin Sprague used it as a drugstore. “The second school was built on Walnut Boulevard in 1835” only to burn in 1843. After this, “for three years Rochester children went to school in the basement of the Christian Church,” after which in “1846 a third school was built on Pine Street.” Again this school was also moved to
Walnut and used until 1857.”
Union-style
In 1865 the district “...adopted the graded, or union, school systems by a vote of forty two yeas to four nays.” A board of education was elected and ten-month school year was adopted. The “first year the school tax was $649.25, of which $500. Was for the teachers’ wages and the rest for incidentals and indebtedness. In 1876, 202 students attended the school. The old building had three rooms furnished with blackboards, badly carved desks and a stove long enough to burn four-foot lengths of wood.” The present site of the Board of Education Administration Offices and teacher center at Fourth and University have now been remodeled and is a beautiful
a custodian for many years. If you have not been in the present building, try to stop by and walk through the halls, which once heard voices of little ones and teens. As you wander around, look at the pictures on the walls, which show many of the graduating classes all the way back into the 1920s.
As the Rochester schools have grown with our growing community take a look back at little Stoney Creek school and then travel down the road a short distance to the magnificent Stoney Creek High School.
Liz Golding is public relations
director of the Rochester-Avon
Historical Society.

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