Valley Central High School - Viking Log Yearbook (Montgomery, NY)

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tRightJ The feeling of intimacy suffered as a result of centralization. At one time, more than fifty students crammed into one Chemistry section. Centralization... Students get lost In the crowd But centralization reached far deep- er than school colors and buses. As was promised, the educational facil- ities improved. In fact, improved so much that VC ranks as one of the top schools in the state. Mr. lorlano, a former student of Maybrook High School said, 'iAca- demic - thatls where centralization helped the most. A small school tsuch as Maybrook I-Iighj limited you in what courses you could take. And, too, a student had the same teacher for English, science, or math every year, grades 7 - 12f' Although it is invariably agreed that the educational facilities have im- proved, there is also a general fear that we may be too big, or, as Mr. Brokaw charged, too impersonal. The forty to fifty students to one teacher ratio in chemistry class is a prime example. Mrs. DiBello, Mr. Ior- lano, and Mr. Brokaw generally agreed that the closer, one-to-one student - teacher relationship added something to education - something which tran- scends facilities. Still, one-to-one situations do re- main in small clubs and post session help. Deeper, even, than centralization's academic impact, was its social im- pact. Mr. Brokaw perceived a tension in the first students to occupy the new Valley Central building, and through- out the years, he has watched that tension gradually decrease into in- significance. There was a lot of friction, those first few years, and by friction, I mean clique-ishness. Montgomery kids wanted to be with Montgomery kids, Walden kids with Walden, and so on. And there was a rivalry which per- sisted for quite a while. Today the village-rivalry, the clique-ishness, is gone. Walden, Mont- gomery, and Maybrook high schools have melted into Valley Central. The friction has disappeared, and a new problem has taken its place. Today you tend to get lost in the crowd, as Mr. lorlano put it. ln a small school you know everyone. But here, students don't always know everyone else in their class. But there may be an advantage to that. It prepares you because when you get out in the world, crowds are a part of real life. Centralization changed our commu- nity, but in the last score of years, the world has changed, too. And the changes have brought us almost full cycle from the place we stood in 1959. tRightl The girls tennis team swung their rackets all the way to win the section championship. Sue Engels waits for a return from her Warwick opponent. 6 OPENING ESSAY

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sig fAboveJ With the fusing of schools also came the fusing of budgets. This allows such extras as the brightly colored uniforms of the Valley Central track team. Centralization I - fuses communities Mass-bussing is introduced he centralization war, 1959, was one we'll never read about in history booksg one we'll never be quizzed on. And this is fortunate, for even though it took place in our own community, few of us have ever heard of it. Maybrook, Montgomery, and Wal- den fought the war against New York State, which encouraged the three sep- arate high schools to centralize and threatened to reduce the area's funds if they did not do so. They fought the war against each other - community against community. The reasons against centralization were not always as sensible, as they were personal. A strong feeling of vil- lage pride and a distrust of all other communities lay at the base of the arguments against centralization. Ray Dulye, editor of the Citizen Herald, remembers that the fears ex- pressed by one village, could be found in them all. A mother in Montgomery would stand at a meeting and say, 'I will not vote to centralize, I will not let my children go to school with those thugs from Walden' And a mother attending a meeting in Walden refused to vote for centralization be- cause she did not want her children attending school with the 'punks' from Montgomery. Parents did not stand alone against the state and centralization. Mrs. Di- Bello, who graduated from Valley Central in 1961, recalled what it was like to be a student faced with central- ization. We didn't want it. As a fresh- man, I knew all the seniors. We had a graduating class of twenty-eight that year. There was a closeness . .. Inev- itably, that closeness would be lost with centralization, and no one want- ed to lose it. Centralization promised, besides the threatened decrease in funds, superior facilities for a higher education. In the end it was this promise which over- came village pride and distrust, and swayed the vote, the separate school districts fused into one - Valley Cen- tral. Valley Central as a name for the new district was not easily arrived at. It demanded nearly as much deliber- ation as the decision to centralize in the first place. The villages had decided to join schools, but not hands, neither had they given up the pride they had tem- porarily set aside in their vote to cen- tralize. They hadn't destroyed the dis- trust. Now the three villages scruti- nized one-another's movements, guarding against the possibility of one village gaining an edge over the oth- ers. They had decided to coin the new district's name using letters from the village-names. The fight against cen- tralization over, the fight became, as Mrs. DiBello put it, whether the 'Mont', 'May', or 'Wal' would come first. Would the name be Montwal- brook? or Maywalmont? Then they had to choose school col- ors. They had to figure out how to blend orange and black with gold and black with red and white. In the end they decided to start from scratch and name their new district Valley Central and chose royal blue and white as the school colors. That way, nobody had an edge. Centralization introduced the com- munity's first mass-school bus trans- portation. Mr. Brokaw, who taught at Walden High School prior to central- ization said that with a centrally lo- cated school, everyone walked. There was no need for buses. Today, buses transport from as far as fifteen miles away. Only a few students who live next door to the school walk. OPENING ESSAY 5

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P, 5 -, it , , 5, ,, if Q F. va? . , FNIIW MWIIMM M I if fir-M . H9 fAhoveJ The use of the traditional Warriner's Grammer hook reflects a return to basic skills in English classes. Mr. Frank Wallner's tenth grade English class reviews the parts of speech. tlueftj Twenty-three yellow submarines plunge onto Route 17K, which runs east to Walden, Newburgh, and Maybrook, and west to Middletown and Montgomery, OPENING ESSAY 7