PEA RIDGE — It was some 138 years ago that Professor J.R. Roberts and his sister, Miss Nanny Roberts, opened the Pea Ridge Academy. In 1884, 128 years ago, the first public school (tax-supported) opened in Pea Ridge for grades first through eighth.
In 1916, 96 years ago, with the closing of the Masonic College, Pea Ridge Public School became “THE” Pea Ridge School, at least if one doesn’t count the many small schools that operated in the rural areas outside of Pea Ridge. Our schools have gone from an everyone-in-one-room school beginning, to today’s multicampus school district with its many sections and classrooms for each grade level.
A few days ago I was walking through one of our newer school buildings, and I became amazed at the sheer size of the building, at the numbersof classrooms and offices, and at the sophistication of the equipment and facilities. Any one of our four campus buildings today is many times larger than our school building for all 12 grades back before 1947. I thought back to my school beginning in 1946, when all 12 grades were still housed in our one 1930-era building. I never knew the building’s exact dimensions. I would estimate them at about 40 feet by 100 feet.
As I recall the spaces, there were six classrooms, a library room and a large central auditorium. It was very common back then to have more than one grade together in each room, and for two grades to be taught by one teacher. My 1946 first-grade class was large enough that we had a room to ourselves, and our own separate teacher, Miss Louise Easley, soonto be Mrs. Harold Beard.
But for second grade in the fall of 1947, half of our class was with the first-graders in Mrs. Faye Price’s room in the newly-constructed northwest wing, and half of our class was in Mrs. Mabel Hardy’s third-grade room just up the hall in the older part of the building. So, the school was expanding quickly in the late 1940s.
By the late 1940s, most of the outlying rural schools were being consolidated with the larger school in town. Several had already closed by 1929. Those included Buttram’s Chapel, Cross Lanes, Shady Grove, Sassafras and Possum Trot (Walnut Grove). For 1948-49, Central School at Leetown, and the Twelve Corners School joined the Pea Ridge School. I’m not sure when Corinth School came in. A little later, in the 1950s, the Bayless Schoolnear Gateway became part of the Pea Ridge District.
Soon after the north wings were added to the school building, the little white frame classroom building from Camp Crowder in Neosho was placed just behind the northeast wing; and in the spring of 1950, second-grade and fourthgrade classes moved into the new south classroom wings, with their great porches, columns, steps and courtyard.
Interestingly, Pea Ridge High School was almost consolidated with Rogers in 1949, when the legislature mandated that schools of under 250 students be consolidated. The SchoolBoard, led by Mr. Hugh Webb, first hoped to work out a merger with Garfield School. When that failed, an unusual special district was formed for Pea Ridge and Sulphur Springs, administered by a County School superintendent.
That move, unusual as it was, seems to many of us to have been a move of great foresight, given the eventual tremendous growth of the Pea Ridge School District in the 1960s, 1970s and continuing to the present day.
The passing of the years has seen a resurgence in the academic vitality of the schools of Pea Ridge.
In the early years, the partnership of the Pea Ridge College and Pea Ridge Public School set a high academic standard in Benton County, and Pea Ridge educational leadership was widely respected. But for many years, after the closing of the college and after the devastating years of the Great Depression, Pea Ridge School carried a “B” classification. In my own school years, we had to take almost every course offered by the high school in order to graduate. The only available electives that I remember were typing and bookkeeping. In the 1960s and 1970s, new elementary buildings were built, forming the east elementary campus, a new school gym was added between the elementary campus and the high school campus, and the older school buildingbecame the high school. In the 1970s, under the leadership of superintendent Roy Roe, Pea Ridge attained an “A” rating, and through the years since then the school’s classification and scholastic achievement level has continued to rise.
The new Pea Ridge High School building was opened in 2000 on West Pickens. The new junior high campus on Weston Street followed in 2006.
After about one year, the junior high was redesignated as Pea Ridge Middle School. In 2010, the new Pea Ridge Primary School was completed, housing the kindergarten, first and second grades. The east campus then became Pea Ridge Intermediate School, for third through fifth grades.
During the 2011-2012 school year, the downtown intermediate school campus has been the site of extensive renovations and additions to the facilities, with an impressive facelift to the grounds.
School progress continues to add promise to the future of our city and its young people.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.
He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621. The opinions of the writer are his own, and are not necessarily those of The Times.
Community, Pages 5 on 06/27/2012