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History of Schoolhouse No. 2
(The Old Stone School)
The first schoolhouse built in Akron was Schoolhouse No. 2,
also referred to as the schoolhouse of Portage Township School District No. 2.
It was erected sometime in the early 1830s.
Akron at the time was a tiny village in Portage County’s
Portage Township. There was already a school in operation in the Township
located in the nearby village of Middlebury, known as Schoolhouse No.1. (The
dates and location for this school is unknown.) Much later Akron annexed
Middlebury, but we still call Portage Twp Schoolhouse No. 2 Akron’s first
school.
Samuel Lane, described the original Schoolhouse No. 2 as “a
small frame school house standing on the northeast corner of Middlebury street
[now Buchtel Ave.] and Broadway, afterwards replaced by a one story stone
building, which is still standing.” Lane made a drawing from memory of the
school and says it dated to 1834. The schoolhouse may well be a few years older,
as there exist school reports for Portage Township in 1833 showing the existence
of school districts No. 1 and No. 4 which suggests their was also a schoolhouse
No.2 and No.3 that year and possibly the previous year too.
The original deed for the Schoolhouse No. 2 property was
lost by its school directors and a new deed was written in 1837 to give clear
title and restate the property was given as a gift from General Simon Perkins to
the school directors. In the text of the deed General Perkins wrote, “Said Simon
Perkins did a long time Since give a writing
to the citizens of
Akron one or more of them agreeing to give the land above described
for a cite for a School house for the benefit of the citizens
generally of the South
Town plat of Akron, and whereas said writing is not given up, nor is it known
where it is but is supposed to be forever lost.”
According to the Ohio school laws in use during the 1830s
(known as the “district school” system) a single schoolhouse represented a
school district having its own school directors (three elected school board
members,) upwards of two appointed school officers and a school tax collector.
Today Akron Public Schools has 57 schoolhouses. Under the same “district school”
laws it would need 171 school board members, 114 school officers and 57 school
tax collectors. We presently have enough challenges with 7 school board members.
. . this is just one of the advantages and efficiencies that the new Akron
School Laws brought about.
The Ohio School Law in effect during the 1820s to 1853s
restricted to $200 the maximum amount of money that could be raised through
taxation to build a schoolhouse. This miserly amount was only enough to fund a
log house shack, known as a “shantee.” This makes the clapboard schoolhouse
depicted by Lane, a rather remarkable schoolhouse because using sawn lumber
would definitely be a budge buster; meaning someone or some group of citizens
donated private funds to help build Akron’s first schoolhouse in the early
1930s.
During this time period the State of Ohio provided school
directors with a portion of the State School fund (based upon the number of
students enrolled,) but his amount didn’t cover even half the school teacher’s
pay. As a result parents had to pay tuition of upwards of $2 per child for the
10 to 12 weeks school was in session during the winter. Parents were also
responsible to provide firewood to keep the school heated, and they had to help
feed and house the school teacher during the winter months when school was
taught. The reason school was taught in the winter was not due the seasonally
light farm chore schedule, as so many today believe. The reason school was
taught in the winter was due to the lack of paying jobs during this time of the
year. This presented an opportunities to hire someone who would take on the task
of teaching at a price the school directors were willing to pay, virtually
nothing. As soon as the weather broke in the spring, teachers stopped teaching
and took on a real job. Almost all jobs paid more than teaching.
In the 1830s, a common laborer on the canal was paid 25
cents a day for a 10 hour day. So a $2 tuition fee was equal to 8 days of hard
labor, or roughly a thousand dollars today. With tuition so high, only a small
percentage of the population could afford to send their child to the common
schools.
After the June 1, 1847 local election to adopt the Akron
School Law, the ownership and title of Portage Township School District No. 2
(and all other schools) was transferred to the new Akron Board of Education.
Because of the $200 tax cap on building schoolhouses,
school directors could only build big, beautiful schoolhouses (or even a
relatively small stone school) if they could A.) raise private funds to add to
the tax collected, or B.) get a loan. However, the local bank refused to
provide the Akron Board of Education with a loan in any amount. The bank’s
principles held different philosophical views than members of the common school
reform movement and denied the loan as a means of trying to stop the taxation of
property for the education of children. Because the school board was refused a
loan by their native bank, no foreign banks would consider the loan. As a result
the town’s one room schoolhouses continued in use as primary schools until after
the Civil War.
In 1867 the local bank was under new management and the
first loans were given to the Akron Board of Education to build schoolhouses.
This set off a schoolhouse building booms in Akron. That year, along with other
school construction projects, Schoolhouse No. 2, got a make-over – this time in
stone.
Unfortunately the new stone school was so small that within
a little more than a decade the decision was made to close, decommission and
sell Schoolhouse No. 2 to the railroad. Eventually the ownership of the building
was transferred to the Summit County Historical Society and they still own it
today. In more recent history 3rd grade students in the Akron Public
School visited the “Old Stone School” as part of their local history class.
Cohill, Michael C. "History of Schoolhouse No. 2"
Unpublished essay, Feb. 2006.
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