In June 1960, tempers flared in the high school gyms of Vigo County, already hot with the summer heat, during emotional debates that pitted city vs. county and threatened the very identity of rural communities.

At stake was the future of public education in Vigo County and whether its nine township systems, two reorganized school districts and the Terre Haute public school system should consolidate into one county-wide school district.

Today, it's taken for granted. But the effort involved more than a year of planning, hearings and bitter debate.

As the Terre Haute Tribune reported on Nov. 1, 1960, just prior to a referendum on the issue, the proposal to consolidate "would bring about sweeping changes to the educational system in Vigo County and the first major overhauling of school administration in more than one century."

The consolidation movement was a statewide one, spurred by 1959 legislation mandating each county to survey its educational system and come up with a reorganization plan.

Charles Clark, who was about to start teaching at Glenn High School, attended some of the hearings conducted in summer of 1960. "Tempers got about as hot as the temperature inside the gyms," he said.

Rural township residents feared a loss of their high schools and community identity. With consolidated high schools, fewer youths could participate on athletic teams or seek leadership positions in student government. Also, students would have to travel greater distances to get to school.

"The school was the center of the whole community," Clark said. "Friday night basketball games were kind of the social event of the week." Clark himself had played basketball for two years at Glenn High School in Lost Creek Township, where he graduated with a class of 28 seniors in 1955.

He taught there in 1960-61 until it closed, and he was then transferred to Gerstmeyer High School under consolidation. Eventually, he worked his way up the system and became Vigo County Schools superintendent.

Pete Chalos, former Terre Haute mayor who had once been a teacher and coach at Prairie Creek High School, also attended some of the hearings.

"I haven't seen anything quite like the meetings we had in those days," he said.

Under the township school system, the township trustee, who often didn't have a background in education, was responsible for everything associated with the schools, including hiring and firing of teachers. Still, Chalos maintains "it was a pretty good system."

Prairie Creek:
Pete Chalos, former
Terre Haute mayor,
once taught and coached at
Prairie Creek High School. 

The smaller school systems provided many opportunities for high school students to learn leadership skills in student councils or other groups. On the downside, many high schools didn't have enough staff to offer a full curriculum -- and rivalries were so intense between schools that they didn't enter into cooperative agreements that could have benefited students.

In 1959, Prairie Creek Township had 58 high school students; Linton Township, 67 high school students; and Riley Township, 89 high school students. The Terre Haute city system had 2,879 high school students, according to a report prepared by the Vigo County School Reorganization Committee.

In those days, Vigo County had more than a dozen high schools, including those in the township, city, State High School and Schulte High School. Basketball sectionals "meant a great deal to a lot of people," said retired West Vigo High School principal Jim Jackson, who coached basketball at the former Concannon High School and later West Vigo High School after it opened in 1960.

Jackson, who spent 49 years as an educator west of the Wabash River, also attended some of the hearings. "People were hot under the collar they talked about taxes going up and communities losing their identity." Consolidation was a drastic change, Jackson said, likening it to Terre Haute and Vigo County units of government "forming Unigov."

But consolidation was necessary, supporters argued, to equalize educational opportunities and facilities for all Vigo County students, Clark said.

"We had significant educational inequities in different parts of the county," he said. Townships with more industry and higher assessed valuation could provide nicer facilities and better teacher wages than poorer townships.

At the time, Nevins Township had an assessed valuation of $4,615 per student, while Fayette Township had an assessed valuation of $48,963 per student.

The 1950s had brought a new focus on public education and the realization that small high schools couldn't offer the kind of advanced curriculum graduates would need to enter college. Wabash Valley state legislators Don Foltz and Birch Bayh were instrumental in helping win legislative approval of the School Corporation Reorganization Act of 1959, Clark said. The legislation lead to the creation of 92 county committees charged with studying more effective and efficient ways to organize schools.

Even the Indiana Chamber of Commerce became aggressively involved in the pro-consolidation movement, pointing out in a brochure that "since 1859, there has been no significant change in the organization pattern for the operation of Indiana Public Schools." More than one-third of Indiana's high schools enrolled fewer than 100 students. The brochure also pointed out that the majority of school districts had so few students and so little taxable wealth that they were "unable to offer high-standard schooling without encountering unreasonably high costs."

But change didn't come easily. News accounts of public hearings during the summer of 1960 pointed to the mistrust of rural residents toward the city.

During a hearing before a State Commission for Reorganization at Woodrow Wilson in July 1960, Bill Joy of Fayette Township argued that "nothing so far said or written guarantees equal opportunities" for all students. He told the state commission, which had to approve the Vigo County plan, that he favored three or four corporations.

"We're going too fast, changing from 12 units to one," he said.

Citizen Lloyd York expressed concerns that the city through sheer population numbers would overrule the desires of those in the less populated townships. "I don't see why the city system is in this at all. It's the county that needs some reorganization. The city already has a well-organized plan and a good one."

And Fayette resident Pete King believed the one-unit plan would bring politics into the schools.

While the plan apparently had much support inside the city, a Nov. 3 news account indicates that Mayor Ralph Tucker addressed precinct workers on two successive nights at City Hall in opposition to the reorganization plan.

On election day in November 1960, voters chose not only between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon for United States president. They also approved, in a close vote, what later became the Vigo County School Corp. effective Jan. 1, 1961.

The final tally showed 14,636 in favor and 12,478 opposed, according to a Tribune post-election story. The city approved it by a wide margin with 11,204 in favor and 5,994 opposed; the townships voted against by a nearly two-to-one margin. In Fayette Township, 628 voted against and 94 in favor; Otter Creek, 1,064 against and 444 in favor; and Sugar Creek, 1,922 against and 452 in favor.

Clark believes a "great compromise" helped win approval. That compromise involved the composition of the new, 7-member Vigo County School Board, which would be elected by all county voters at-large. The county was divided into five districts, with three members coming from the Harrison Township (Terre Haute) district, and four members coming from districts representing the remaining 11 townships. School Board members had to live in their respective districts.

The board makeup meant the balance of power would be outside the city, Clark said. "Many people in the townships outside Terre Haute were fearful the city would dominate the new system," he said.

Jackson says without question, students benefited from consolidation.

"In the small county schools, it was difficult to offer the advanced classes of chemistry, physics, advanced math and honors English that you could offer once reorganization occurred."

But he believes North and South have grown too large and the community would have benefited from a fourth major east side high school.

The closing of some of the township high schools "took the life out of some of the smaller towns," Chalos said. And going from the smaller rural schools to larger, consolidated high schools was "a really dramatic change."

Approval of a county-wide school district was just the first step of a long, arduous process of closing and consolidating many schools and opening others, recalls Paul Humphrey, 82, who served on both the Terre Haute city school board and later served as the first president of the Vigo County School Board.

During one meeting in which the new School Board announced plans for several schools to close, "I had tomatoes and vegetables thrown at me on the stage when we announced the changes," Humphrey said. "It was a little rough at the time." That meeting had about 800 people in attendance, he recalled.

As the board's chief spokesman, he experienced the brunt of people's wrath. He received calls years afterward, with an angry citizens saying: "Hey, you closed my high school and you made my kids stand out in the cold at 4 a.m. to get on a bus."

While Humphrey believes consolidation was necessary to provide Vigo County students with the best possible education, even he has concerns about the large size of North and South high schools, which have about 2,000 students each.

"I'm a little chagrined that we have such large high schools."

Still, "I am convinced educational opportunity for this county was markedly enhanced by reorganization I think we've got a good system in Vigo County," Humphrey said.