High School Building01

 

Waupaca County Post

Prime Time

February 2, 2006

 

When Waupaca Was Young

By Dan Nerhaugen

 

A Single School For All Students Would Have Cost $35,000

 

            An editorial in one of the local newspapers floated the idea, 100 years ago this week, of educating all Waupaca-area public school students at one location.

            The op-ed page of the Feb. 1, 1906, Waupaca Post featured a headline concerning “A New High School Building’.  Said the Waupaca paper, “Though the Post has been unable as yet, to get any communications for publication upon the subject, conversation with many people has disclosed that sentiment for a new school building is pretty general.  It seems to be the opinion, also, that the present high school building should be torn down, and a new building, large enough to accommodate the high school and the grades, should be erected upon the same site.

            “Those who favor this idea say that if the high school building is built upon some other location, the present building, being unsafe, and having outlived its usefulness, would have to be torn down in any event, and a new grade building erected, and it would be cheaper, and more economical in many ways, to combine the high school building with a grade building.

            “Delavan has just completed a new school building, at a cost of about $45,000 dollars.  It is large enough to accommodate all the grades and the high school as well, Delavan being a little smaller than this city, with a school population of between 600 and 700.  It is estimated that, for $35,000, Waupaca could erect a building which would be large enough for the grades other than those now in the grade building, and also for a high school.

            “Also, this amount would cover the building of a central heating plant, situated between the two buildings, which is a necessity, and which would probably pay for itself in a few years, in that less fuel would be consumed in having one large fire, than in having seven smaller ones, as at present.  It will be an excellent idea to have the heating plant separate from the school buildings, for boilers sometimes explode.

            ‘The tax payers of Waupaca will have to face this problem of a new building within the year.  Let there be a free an full discussion, that all of the light possible may be secured upon it.”

            An intractable problem facing early 20^th-century Waupaca – a never-ending need for new school construction – was familiar to many American communities of the era. 

            The space shortage stemmed largely from a sudden proliferation of public high schools.

            As recently as the late 1800s, very few Americans attended high schools. Within a few generations, though, virtually everyone was expected not only to attend, but to graduate.