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.