Dublin Core
Title
Caledonia School No. 5
Description
Number 5 on the Burleigh map, records for this school prior to 1892 are missing due to a major fire on Main Street that year. The structure shown by Burleigh received a west wing in 1896 and a north wing in 1904. In 1914, a new brick structure replaced the original school.<br />
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As of 1892, education in New York State was on the verge of transformation. Union Free School Districts, enabled by an 1853 law, created free schooling through the power of local taxation under the supervision of an elected school board. Union schools grew in number thereafter, eventually supplanting private academies. There were however tensions between local boards and the University of the State of New York over standards; in 1894, the Consolidated School Law gave to its Board of Regents the power of visitation and control. School No. 5 became a part of this system in 1895 (not without some local resistance), and then was reorganized as Caledonia's high school in 1898. <br />
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The principle of free schools necessitated annual reports to the public--here for the school year ending June 1896. We see salaries paid to teachers, a clerk and a janitor; charges for books, school supplies, coal for heating, and pricey "apparatus" from Bausch & Lomb--optical instruments, presumably. High school continued here until 1939, when the new Caledonia-Mumford campus opened on North Road and eventually the old building became home to the Big Springs Historical Society and Museum.
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Original Format
Newspaper article