History of the Indian Hill Exempted Village School District
Before the Indian Hill Rural School District was formed in 1936, six school districts, each with its own school and school board, operated locally.
Camp Dennison School District, which included the Village of Camp Dennison, had a brick school with two rooms downstairs and a general-purpose room for school activities and village meetings upstairs. Now a popular restaurant, appropriately named "The Schoolhouse," the building on Glendale-Milford Road still houses many original artifacts from its school days.
A small one-room frame school at the southwest corner of Galbraith (Kugler Mill) and Montgomery Roads, in the area now occupied by the State Park, housed students of the Concord School District. Supplanted with a four-room brick building financed as a Public Works Administration project in 1938, the school, with many additions and improvements, became Indian Hill's Concord School.
Franklin School District had a two-room brick school located at the corner of Given and Shawnee Run Roads; when the building was closed, the property was sold to Thomas Haydock who remodeled it into his present home.
Situated on the northeast corner of Drake and Indian Hill Roads, a one-room school built ten years before the Civil War served the Jefferson School District. This building went through several changes and additions to become a four-room school that also served as a community center. It is now the property of the Armstrong Chapel Church and is known as the Armstrong Community Building.
Remington School District, including the Village of Remington, was a two-room school that is now owned and occupied by the Knights of Columbus on Loveland-Madeira Road.
With its two-room red brick school located at the corner of Given and Camargo Roads, the Washington School District's building served as offices for the Village of Indian Hill until 1960 and, later, the Indian Hill Exempted Village School District's administration. In 1974, after extensive remodeling, the Indian Hill Historical Society became housed in the structure and continues to operate from that location.
When the Ohio School Foundation program was instituted to promote more efficient and improved school organization, it became necessary for the local school districts to consolidate in order to qualify for financial aid from the state. Camp Dennison, Franklin, Jefferson, Remington, and Washington School Districts were united to form the Indian Hill Rural School District in 1936; the Hamilton County superintendent of schools appointed five school board members, one from each local district, to form the Indian Hill Board of Education. A short time later, the Concord School District petitioned the Indian Hill Board of Education to become part of the Indian Hill Rural School District.
Within a few years, parents became dissatisfied with the schools and demanded a more complete education program with a better-qualified staff of teachers. With the incorporation of the Village of Indian Hill in July 1941, the village boundaries did not coincide with the boundaries of the Indian Hill School District, and parents, residents of the area with children in the Indian Hill Schools and in private schools, began promoting the idea of a new school.
The Indian Hill Exempted School District, free from the control of the Hamilton County Board of Education and directly under state control, hired its first superintendent, Robert K. Salisbury, in 1946. He worked with the now remaining Camp Dennison, Concord, Jefferson, and Remington Schools with a total population of 302 pupils.
Attempts were made in 1948 by the Indian Hill Board of Education and the newly appointed superintendent of schools, C. M. Patrick, to consolidate the four schools into two larger, more complete, units, but each area wanted to retain its own school.
Community surveys determined the best procedure for the school district, and, eventually, a new school was planned as the first of a ten-year master building plan. The land was acquired at the southeast corner of Shawnee Run and Drake Roads by the Village, Board of Education, and Indian Hill Church; Taylor and Porter were employed as architects to build the new school. Small buildings and a large frame home had to be razed before construction could begin.
The building, originally Indian Hill High School, then Shawnee School, and now Indian Hill Elementary School, was planned to house grades K-6 of the Camp Dennison, Jefferson, and Remington Schools (Concord School was to remain a K-6 school) and grades 7-12 of the entire district. "What will they do with all that room?" "They'll never have enough pupils to fill that building!" were comments heard around the Village.
Since the money to furnish and equip the new school building was scarce, old desks, furniture, and books were assembled in the Concord School gymnasium, the only space large enough to handle the sorting, organizing, and refinishing. Custodial help was minimal, so administrators, faculty, staff, and parents were recruited to get the job done; at the end of the summer of 1950, all was in readiness - except the new building.
The school was to be ready for occupancy on September 1, but the opening was delayed. Finally, on Saturday, September 16, Griffith Resor, president of the Board of Education, toured Concord School with the superintendent and decided the school would open there the following Monday with grades 7-9 attending Concord and K-6 attending Jefferson School on a temporary basis. As the first new building of the Indian Hill School District was nearing completion in the fall of 1950, 93 students, grades 7-9, were housed in Concord School, along with Concord's grades K-6.
Where did all the classes meet? In every nook and cranny! The Concord gymnasium became homeroom for the entire junior high population, with old cardboard cartons, in which the floor tile for the new building had been received, numbered, and placed on the gym stage to serve as lockers for the students. Home economics classes were held in one basement shower room and industrial arts in another; Latin classes met in a storage closet.
In spite of the cramped quarters, a complete junior high education program of math, science, English, social studies, Latin, music, physical education, home economics, and industrial arts was offered; the spirit of cooperation was enthusiastic and, as records show, scholastic standards, high.
Just before winter break, the elementary grades from Camp Dennison, Jefferson, and Remington, housed in the Jefferson building, and the District's junior high students from Concord School moved into their new home. Even though the move had taken place just before the holidays, parties abounded in the elementary grades, and junior high students assembled in the empty dining room, where faculty members had secretly decorated the room and arranged a special tea table.
Over the holidays, kitchen equipment, dining room furniture, dishes, and silverware were received and, as in the past, willing hands came to the rescue. Parents, teachers, and administrators washed dishes and mopped floors on New Year's Day so the cafeteria could be opened when classes resumed the next morning.
Since the gymnasium was under construction, with completion scheduled for March 1952, all physical education classes met outdoors year-round, rain (or worse!) or shine. In order to provide an area for noon activities, the tables and chairs in the library were pushed aside and square dancing became a daily activity for teachers and students, alike. There were no sidewalks, the drive around the side of the building was not black-topped, and it often became a muddy, miry area in which cars were constantly getting stuck.
Within that first half-year of school in the new building during the winter of 1951, the Board of Education discovered the School District had enough pupils to declare itself an exempted school district under the direct supervision of the state if all the territory in the Village was in the school district. By transfer of territory, this requirement was met; however, neighboring school districts were not happy to lose the areas formerly within their jurisdiction.
The Indian Hill Board of Education declared itself exempt from Hamilton County supervision on April 17, 1951. The Hamilton County Board of Education immediately disregarded the declaration and moved to consolidate the Indian Hill District with those of Madeira, Newtown, and Terrace Park. A series of proposals and, finally, lawsuits brought by neighboring districts kept things in turmoil for a couple of years.
In the meantime, the District continued to grow and prosper. Classes were larger, faculty members were added, the curriculum was enlarged, and a new wing was added at right angles to the newly built school.
In October 1953, Indian Hill, now a four-year high school with 27 seniors, 33 juniors, 50 sophomores, 57 freshmen, and a junior high school of 115, was granted a charter as a first-grade high school by the State of Ohio.
Vernon Hoffman, president of the Board of Education, presented diplomas in the spring of 1954 to the Indian Hill Exempted Village School District's first graduating class, 27 young men and women resplendent in their red and white robes. Dr. Clyde Hissong, state director of education, gave the first commencement address.
The school organization remained much the same during the 1954-55 year, with 19 teachers on the junior/senior high school faculty and an enrollment of 362 pupils and 16 on the K-6 faculty with an enrollment of 172. R. L. Walter became the new principal of the Indian Hill Junior and Senior High School in the fall of 1954. Mrs. Zura Patrick, previously principal of Concord School and the High School, became the first principal of Indian Hill Elementary School and Edward Hope, principal of Concord.
A 1955 survey on the student population of the Indian Hill Exempted Village School District indicated the need for more classroom space, so, again, bond issues, hiring of architects, and locating a site became the task of the Board of Education. Faculty committees were organized and spent two years in studies, surveys, and school visitations. They recommended a functional elementary building with two rooms for kindergartners, three rooms for each of the first six grades, an auditorium, music room, dining room, kitchen, library, and gymnasium, as also recommended by the Bureau of Education Research of Ohio in its The Educational Needs for Indian Hill.
When this building was ready for occupancy in September 1959, grades kindergarten and 2-6 were moved into it. An unexpected population growth made it necessary to change the original plan, for, at the time of the move, there were four sections each of fifth and sixth-grade children, and the first-grade retained rooms in the saw-toothed wing of the high school building during the 1959-60 school year. The new Indian Hill Elementary building at 6205 Drake Road became known as the Drake Road Elementary School to avoid confusion with Indian Hill High School across the road.
Continued growth in the high school made it necessary to move out of the first-grade class, so, in the fall of 1960, the Jefferson Community Building again became the home of the elementary school classes. Because of the crowded conditions, classes of various levels were maintained at the Jefferson location through the 1962-63 school year.
In the fall of 1963, a new Indian Hill High School, with principal James Sailer, accommodated students, grades 9-12, at 6845 Drake Road; now there was room for additional pupils in the old high school building. Grades five and six of the Concord and Drake Road Schools were moved into that building with the seventh and eighth grades to form the middle school with Dr. Ann Grooms as principal. Mrs. Grooms had been a former teacher in the Indian Hill schools, teaching fourth grade in the Jefferson building in 1953 and second grade in the saw-toothed wing in 1954. Concord and Drake Road Elementary remained as K-4 schools with Rachel Dennison and Zura J. Patrick serving as principals, respectively. Carl Moran, principal of Concord School, 1955-1963, became assistant superintendent of the District.
The junior high was moved into the new wing of the Indian Hill Junior and Senior High School in September 1965 - Harold Morse was hired as principal of that school - and the fourth grades from the Concord and Drake Road Elementary Schools were moved into the middle school.
Mary Grove, a Drake Road Elementary School third-grade teacher since 1958, became principal of Concord School in 1966.
By the 1969-70 school year, Stage IV, Part I of the Indian Hill School District's master plan, which included additional classrooms and a cafeteria at the high school, was ready for occupancy, with Stage IV, Part II, including the high school auditorium and remodeling of the athletic facilities, built in 1970-71 while Hugh Meabon was principal.
Wyandot School, a much-needed elementary facility at the time for grades 4-6, was built and ready for occupancy by the beginning of the 1972-73 school year in Kenwood where a considerable number of students lived within walking distance. Mrs. Grace O'Brien Hartke was appointed principal and served as such until her retirement in 1974; Dan Shull was appointed to take her place during the ensuing summer.
The enrollment of the School District was watched very carefully by administrators, the Board of Education, and interested lay committees; by the 1972-73 school year, the student population reached an all-time high of 3,442. However, this upward trend was not destined t continue, and, by September 1973, the enrollment showed 123 fewer students and steadily decreased from that point.
Immediately following the last day of school in June 1972, contractors moved into the Shawnee building and began an extensive remodeling of the classrooms, making one large room out of two to accommodate team teaching. Remodeling also included carpeted floors in the main portion of the classroom area and renovation of the cafeteria. Work was completed by the fall of 1972, and students, in grades 4-6, started another year of school under the supervision of principal Robert Baas. Also by the fall of '72, remodeling work was begun on the first two classrooms of the sawtooth area of Shawnee to make a suitable location for the Central (Board of Education) Office which moved from the old Washington School on December 26, 1972.
Dr. James Sailer resigned from the superintendency in July 1973 and was replaced by Dr. Robert E. Boston. Robert Baas became principal of Indian Hill Junior High School during the summer of 1975, Gary Corn was appointed principal of Shawnee School, and John Williams was employed as High School assistant principal. Hugh Meabon resigned as principal of the High School in the summer of 1976, and Dr. Karl Feltman was employed, along with Jeff Sittason as assistant principal, to take his place, while Richard Baringer was hired as Mr. Baas' assistant. When Concord School was sold in 1977 and consolidated its pupils with Wyandot and Drake Road Schools, Mary Grove became principal of Drake Road School and remained such until 1985 when Wyandot was sold. Wyandot and Drake Road Schools consolidated with Indian Hill Elementary School (formerly Shawnee School), and Mrs. Grove became principal, assisted by Gary Corn. When Mrs. Grove retired in 1987, Mr. Corn became the principal of the elementary school.
In the spring of 1988, Drake Road School, which had housed only Indian Hill kindergartners and leased most of the space to the Milford School District for its sixth graders since 1985, was for sale. However, after several community meetings pertaining to the issue, the Board of Education voted to retain the building. The school was renamed Indian Hill Primary School to accommodate grades K-2, and Dr. Jane R. Knudson was hired as principal in 1989.