Ilion High School - Class of 1959

Utica Observer - Sept. 29, 1958

It's No Cinch Starting Up New School

Article 5

It's No Cinch Starting Up New School
Strange Noises in Pulic Adress System, Mystery Keys, and Missing Chairs
By Harold E. Whittemore

Strange noises in the public address system, dozens of keys and no place to put them, missing kindergarten chairs.

These are only a few of the occupational hazards complicating the busy lives of school administrators opening new schools.

New schools are big business. If you doubt it, look at your tax bill.

The responsibility of planning, developing, equipping and opening the buildings is formidable.

It's no job for an amateur - or anyone with unsteady nerves or a penchant for watching the clock.

Take the Weber Ave. Elementary School opened in Ilion earlier this month. It is much like many others built in Central New York to absorb the onrush of post-World War II youngsters.

Today, 360 freckled noses are at the grindstone in the 17-room school just as though the school always had been right there.

AIt wasn't that easy. Mrs. Margaret Peters, principal; George Anderson, elementary supervisor, and the 14 teachers assigned to Weber Ave. School voluntarily spent many overtime hours getting the shining new rooms and corridors in shape.

The battle isn't over. Empty bookshelves yawn in a spacious new library because the school hasn't yet been able to hire an elementary librarian.

The kids don't mind. They keep the books in their rooms.

There's another inconvenience plaguing Ilion's planners. Kindergarten chairs, ordered last June 8, for delivery in three weeks, are still somewhere in the factory's production line.

Letters, phone calls, telegrams - even a stop at the plant by Anderson during his vacation - failed to get the chairs to Ilion on time. Too many other schools wanted kindergarten chairs at the same time.

Again, the children don't mind. They use borrowed chairs - even sit on the shiny, composition floor when the need requires.

But the kindergarten teachers aren't happy.

Among the 14 teachers at Weber Avenue are six new to Ilion. Yet virtually the entire staff showed up of their own accord several days before Labor Day to help Mrs. Peters find the right doors for the right keys, arrange furniture and do a hundred other necessary details.

The keys are a prime joke at the school. Seems each of the contractors had a different numbering system. Mrs, Peters just didn't take No. 1 key and open No. 1 door. They had to try every key in every door until the door opened.

The public address system worked just, fine - in announcing bulletins of the adjacent Ilion High School. But there wasn't a sound when it came to Weber Avenue School news.

So, Mrs. Peters, assisted by Robert Hall, and Leo Grygiel, high school administrators, spent two hours after school speaking into the public address system, pushing buttons and listening to what came out.

It works fine now.

Personnel was a headache. On the last day of school in June, every position at Weber Avenue School was filled. In a few short weeks there were seven vacancies for one reason or another. Some fast work took care of all jobs but the librarian.

The drapes and Venetian blinds just arrived this week but it didn't take long to get them in place. Mrs. Peters is still using a makeshift telephone while "bugs" in the regular system are ironed out.

Weber Avenue School cost more than a million and a half and took two years to build. Long before ground was broken in 1956 however, residents of the area had been called in, told of the outlook for future school registration and asked to serve on an advisory committee.

They did and offered many excellent suggestions

Again when the ticklish problem of rezoning the village in order to equalize the pupil-load came up, school administrators went to the parents with letters and explanatory meetings.

The result was that only two parents objected to the new system.

Earlier this month, Ilion taxpayers opened their school tax bills. Later this fall, they'll be guests at an open house at Weber Avenue School to see for themselves what they've purchased.

Because of advance planning, good judgment - and professional know-how - they'll inspect a bargain.

Photo Captions

BEFORE - This view of Ilion High School before construction of the Weber Avenue Elementary School started in 1956 is only a memory. The football field and track have been moved south to make room for the grade school.

AFTER - Now the spacious, one story Weber Avenue school almost dwarfs adjacent Ilion High School and greatly eases the overcrowded elementary enrollment in Ilion. Nearly 400 children are enrolled in the new school, a figure well above the advance estimates. This is actually the architect's conception of the Wther.Avenue school but the completed building almost exactly matches Myron Jordan's rendering, except for the shade tree at the front of the school - and in a few years they'll be there too.