In these histories of the mergers of joint school districts in the second half of the century, we see immense changes in the system of county education. In the fifties there was a reversal of the earlier pattern of people leaving the farmlands to seek employment in the bustling, commercial and industrial river communities. After World War II, farmland was sold to developers who made the rural areas suburban in character. In a review of County Superintendency - A Century of Service in Beaver County, the editor writes, ". . . concomitant with the drift to the countryside comes a rebirth in rural education; new elementary schools, new junior high schools and new senior high schools as needed; new services must be rendered. These are in the plans - not of tomorrow - but of today.""'
Permissive state legislation and financial policies supporting the building programs of the fifties and sixties made the township jointures with their modern school complexes and well-administered school systems almost overnight successful enterprises. One consequence was the closing of the county office of education. Its supervisory role was no longer needed.
The 1954 summary of the duties and achievements of the county superintendents over the years presents the varied work of the county office and the influence of its leaders in education - schoolmen known and respected throughout the county. From 1900 to 1970, when the county office closed, six superintendents served Beaver County schools: Chester A. Moore, 1896-1905; Andrew Lester, 1905-1908; David C. Locke, 1908-1930; William G. Lambert, 1930-1934; Eben D. Davidson, 1934-1950; and H. Curtis Elder, 1950-1970.
Assistant county superintendents were often successful school men in the county who chose to serve in a wider area than the local district: N. N. Nelson, E. D. Davidson, Ralph Hood, F. A. Barkley, H. C. Elder, N. N. Smith, R. 0. Robertson, G. W. Newton, J. Richard Fruth, Charles D. Groff, E. C. Schaffer. Of these, Assistant Superintendents Barkley, Smith, Robertson, and Newton served lengthy terms of 11 to 24 years.
Miss Hannah A. Parks for 22 years served as Supervisor of Special Education in the Beaver County schools. With a background of teaching experience and graduate studies leading to a Master of Arts degree in psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, Miss Parks developed an interest in, and knowledge concerning the problems of exceptional children."
Named Supervisor of Special Education in September, 1941, Miss Parks began by studying the various plans in the county schools for teaching exceptional children. There were many children, mentally retarded, with severe learning problems in the schools at that time. Her first few years were given to countywide testing of the children and arranging for the disposition of their cases. Firstgraders with a mental age below four and a half were suspended for the balance of the school year. Sixteen-year-olds who tested below the mental age of ten were given the option of leaving school. The balance of the mentally retarded children were placed in school according to age but were given work on their mental level."
From these years of examination and planning for the special education program in the county, the supervisor created a county-wide system of therapists in speech, hearing, and sight, special classes for the educable mentally retarded and for the trainable mentally retarded, and special teachers and provisions for the severely physically handicapped children.
In the year before her retirement in July, 1963, Miss Parks headed a staff of 39 instructors of special education in the county schools. They consisted of nine itinerant therapists in speech, hearing, sight disorders, twelve teachers of elementary classes of educable mentally retarded, ten teachers of secondary classes of educable mentally retarded, six instructors of classes of the trainable mentally retarded, and two instructors for the physically handicapped students."'
Dr. Richard K. Myers was appointed Supervisor of Special Education in 19631964 and continued in that position until 1969, when Dr. S. Robert Marziano took over the work of Supervisor of Special Education. In 1970, these special services and educational programs became the responsibility of the Beaver Valley Intermediate Unit.
From early supervision of the isolated one-room schools, to the establishment of Teachers' Institutes, to the administering of eighth-grade examinations, to the supervision of the education of exceptional children, to advisory and supervisory work with individual districts, the personnel of the County Office of Education played an essential part in the development of the educational system in the county. In the Foreword to the last edition of the Public School Annual in 1970, the editor, presumably Superintendent Elder, writes that the "documentation of public school change is in the accumulated pages of the Beaver County Public School Annuals. " The final word is that "the Intermediate Unit will provide consultative, advisory, and program services to school districts."