As one reviews the history of the schools of Beaver County, one cannot help but become aware of how the schools reflect the challenges and social concerns of each passing era. During the Second World War the schools did what they could to support our Armed Forces and to reassure as much as possible the youth of the county. Later, the U.S.S.R. with Sputnik was first to explore space. County schools responded as did the whole American educational system by placing a heavy emphasis on mathematics and science, even on foreign language skills. The Civil Rights Movement in the sixties led to needed reforms in the schools and greater cooperation and understanding between the races.
Most recently the county schools have been devastated by the economic collapse of the steel industry in the late seventies and early eighties. The towns and school districts most affected were Aliquippa, Ambridge, and Midland, those communities where the steel industries had been established at the beginning of the century. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation sold out to the LTV conglomerate. Not many years later employment plunged from 10,000 workers to some 700 employed in the tin mill, one small mill in a steel mill complex that extended for miles along the Ohio River. In Ambridge, the American Bridge Company, a subsidiary of U. S. Steel, shut down and 4,500 workers were suddenly unemployed. An observer writing in the Times notes "the rusting sheds and stacks of Crucible Steel in Midland strung out along the river, broken windows like eyeless sockets, men on the street corner" - a ghost mill and a stricken community.
The point we must make is that the schools in the county suffered along with the laid-off workers and blighted business districts. As the unemployment figures in the county soared above the national average, people moved. They went south. They went west. Some returned. Many did not. The emigration of Beaver Countians plus the demographic reality of the subsiding "baby boom" led to declining populations in all but one of the fifteen school districts. Only South Side increased its enrollment from 1975 to 1983.
Declining student enrollments ten years after the construction of modern school complexes in some of the towns and most of the township schools led to boarded up buildings, closed schools, schools sold for rental development, offices, or retail concerns. By 1987 the toll was greater. In Aliquippa its newest structure, the junior high school, was closed, and all district students attended two schools, the Aliquippa Elementary and the Aliquippa junior-Senior High School. In Midland in 1983 three elementary schools were razed. Lincoln High School was closed in 1985. In the school year 1985-1986 elementary and secondary students from grades 3-12 were housed in Neal School. Grades K-2 were located in the administration-gymnasium building. In 1986-1987, grades 7 through 12 became tuition students in the Beaver Area School District, leaving an elementary enrollment of 456, according to Superintendent William Donley. The assignment of students on a tuition basis in the Beaver Area Schools has been challenged by the Midland Education Association, and the issue has not yet been resolved. "'
Not only in the distressed areas of Beaver County, but also nationwide, in recent years, students have made falling scores in their verbal and mathematical skills on College Board tests. In April 1983, the Education Department of the United States government published a shocking report titled "A Nation at Risk," a document that led the government to demand reform in the nation's educational system. Suggestions for reform included merit pay for teachers, standardized achievement tests spaced out over the elementary grades and junior high school, and better quality of textbooks."'
In Pennsylvania, Governor Richard Thornburgh forced through the legislature an annual program of mandatory testing in the basic skills in reading and mathematics. The year 1987-1988 is the third year of state-wide Testing for Essential Learning and Literacy Skills (TELLS) in grades 3, 5, and 8. Students who fall below a state-elected score are eligible for remedial instruction, for which state funds are available.
Most administrators agree that the testing program is invaluable in pointing out weak areas of instruction and individual problems and achievements in basic learning skills. The long range planning programs of the fifteen school districts analyze their students' responses and set up appropriate measures for improvement. As an example of such programs and concern, one can turn one's attention to the Rochester School District. This district has two certified reading specialists and a specialist in mathematics. One of the reading specialists who works with grades K-6, Patricia Gill, comments: "There is a marked improvement. They're (the children) starting to see reading as an enjoyment and having good feelings about it as they understand what they read."
The emphasis in all our county schools today is on excellence. Among administrators, teachers, and students, the striving for excellence has been aroused. Today, it is everybody's responsibility to encourage the youth of the county to sharpen their learning skills. The future of the county is depending upon knowledgeable, trained individuals.
At the conclusion of this history of education in Beaver County in the twentieth century, we may well look ahead. What of the future? Prediction is a risky business, but that need not prevent a few "educated" guesses, or informed speculation.
Decreasing enrollments may lead eventually to new school jointures in the county. Single, small town districts with school enrollments less than 1,000 may need to merge with a neighboring district. Other possible mergers may occur in the distant future. Some of the small towns with blighted business areas may choose to team together.
Lacking economic growth, there are areas in the county badly blighted. It may be that the county should take a hint from Pittsburgh where city officials have successfully applied for a " 12.5 million grant from a Connecticut foundation and a matching amount from other sources to set up innovative programs to keep students in school.""' A much smaller sum may work wonders to lower drop-out rates in distressed communities in our county, to increase teenage employment, and to improve academic records. Some hard cash spent on like programs here in the county may produce positive attitudes in the schools - an eagerness to learn, a willingness to revitalize a neighborhood - to plan, hopefully, for a better future.
Perhaps in the future there may be more county-wide writing programs such as the recent Beaver County Times Poetry Contest to challenge students to selfexpression. Why not a county magazine, edited by volunteers, a magazine that publishes the best of students' stories, essays, poems, book reviews, biographies, and autobiographies, all collected from creative writing classes in fifteen school districts?
Finally, in the future, the United States is going to have to take its public schools more seriously in order to recover its world leadership in science and the arts, in technology, manufacturing, and productivity. These attitudes and determinations are actually already "trickling down" from national and state leaders in education. Teachers themselves in the future will hold higher professional standards and in return may receive much-needed respect and appreciation from the public.
Few of our county teachers from 1900 to
the late 1980s have been named in this history, but all of us
know there would be no schools without them. Beaver County teachers
have, over the decades, shared their love of learning with Beaver
County children and youth, bestowing upon them gifts of knowledge
and understanding. Through such measures, teachers will continue
in that privileged role in the county schools of the future.