Waggener High School - RingBrothersHistory.com

The Voice of St. Matthews, August 15, 1957:EditorialEditorial—A salute for our schoolsWe’re proud of our school system in St. Matthews. We realize it’s only part of a system embracing theentire County, but we take a particular pride and interest in those schools in our neighborhood. And weare proud of our Catholic schools as well as the public schools.Back in 1949, when The Voice first opened for business, there were only four schools—Greathouse,Ballard, Lyndon and Middletown—to serve this whole area. The high school was a small one in Anchorage.The only Catholic schools here were Holy Spirit and Holy Trinity.Since then, Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Margaret Mary and Trinity High has been added to the Catholicschool system.Stivers, Chenoweth, St. Matthews Elementary, Waggener High and Eastern High have been built bythe County school system.This year, two more have been added — Shryock and Wilder.The booming development of our community has made the addition of these schools vitally necessary.They have been expensive. Time and again we have been asked for more taxes.Though only one of these tax increases was approved by the voters, we in St. Matthews can take particularpride in the fact that we did not shirk our duty. The people here always voted for the increasedtaxes, except on one occasion when we narrowly voted down an occupational tax. It was our vote in1952 that put across the increase of 50 cents and gave the School Board the money to meet the need tobuild more schools. Other sections of the County voted against the tax. But we voted in favor of it bysuch a heavy margin, that the deficit was easily made up.Another source of pride is the continuing interest the people of St. Matthews have shown in theschools. We attend P.T.A. meetings faithfully, participate in school activities, and generally give theteachers the fullest cooperation. We like our teachers and we think they like us.Even the criticism some of us have leveled at times at our school system is evidence, not of an urge tobe destructive, but of a desire to make what is good even better, if possible. If we have caused theschool system any headaches, we are sorry. We were merely trying, in our fumbling way, to help.The problems of the schools in the past few years have been terrific. We think the County school system(as well as the Catholic) has handled this situation masterfully. Every problem has not been solvedand won’t be, and we’ve all made mistakes, but the problems and mistakes were those of an expandingschool system and not, Thank Heavens, of a declining one. They were merely the pains of growing.We know the County school system’s problems — not enough money, not quite enough qualifiedteachers, and probably most serious of all, a shortage of trained, experienced administrative personnelto fill the posts of responsibility that have been opening up in the expanding system.We think school superintendent Richard VanHoose and his staff and his principals and teachers havedone a marvelous job. They have created schools that have the very air of American democracy aboutthem, that children (unlike their parents before them) love to attend, and that are an integral and happypart of our community life.We salute them.