Generations in Clinton have attended The Morgan School. Your parents or grandparents have informed you about their days here as a high school students. But do you really know the history of the school you go to? Pawprint scoured the internet and talked to teachers to learn more about how the Morgan community was and how its changed.
This is the third The Morgan School built…
Charles Morgan was a former resident of Clinton and founded The Morgan School by giving back to his community. In the summer of 1868, Morgan bought two and a half acres of land that would later be called, Abraham Pierson School. Morgan created a board of four trustees with only a $50,000 budget for the school to be built. As time went by and the building was almost done, the price was six times more expensive than the original budget.
Was he mad? No at all. According to The Charles Morgan Article, The famous Morgan was later reported suggesting that “no other $300,000 of his wealth had ever given him so much pleasure.”
The team of trustees hired by Morgan, built the school and a cottage right next to it for the principal’s house. In 1875, the school opened with only five teachers and 205 students. Every grade could attend this school, from K-12. As each year passed and more students needed education, The Morgan School was overcrowded. Going forward, the decision was creating a grade school where the principal’s house was.
In 1933, the lower grades of Morgan moved to the Old Mill District School. Now, this school was turned into a house on Glenwood Road.
By 1947, a team of state inspectors claimed The Morgan School building was unsafe for occupancy. In May 1950, Clinton voted 425-154 to approve a new high school building. The 24-acre site for the proposed building had been purchased by the town in 1948 for $10,000. Located on Route 81. This new building opened its doors Fall of 1951 and was for grades 7-12.
61 years later, however, the townspeople noticed that The Morgan School was facing similar problems than the last. Such as leaking, inefficient facility, and code violations. Luckily, in 2012, the town approved the construction of our current Morgan with the estimated cost of 68 million dollars.
Traditions not kept…
“We look forward to the combination of re-establishing some of the traditions that embody The Morgan School, while leaping forward to provide state-of-the-art facilities and preparing our students for whatever comes after high school,” said Superintendent of CPS, Jack cross in 2016 at the ribbon cutting ceremony.
Although there are plenty of traditions we follow today, such as spirit week, homecoming football, pep rallys, and Swoosh for Change, in the past there were traditions important to Morgan that have been left behind.
Mr. Neri, the Tech Education teacher here at Morgan, was part of the last graduating class at the old Morgan School in 2016. Besides the bad maintenance and unkept rooms, the spirit was still there.
“The old school had a spirit, like the ‘We are Morgan; we are family’, you can feel the history in the halls.” Neri expressed.
Neri’s favorite tradition that has been left in the past was the Homecoming Float Building. After school, the students would go down to the wood and metal shop and build their floats. Each grade got a float and was able to pick the theme. The floats would be taken from The Morgan School to Joel School on the back of a flat bed truck.
“Involvement has definitely dropped throughout the years,” Neri reflected.
The evolution of the Journalism Department.
The Morgan Pawprint is our current source for news, articles, and videos about The Morgan School and town of Clinton. Eric Carroll is the Journalism class teacher. This is Carroll’s first year teaching Journalism due to the retirement of Ms. Chausse. In this class Carroll teaches the students how to detect fluff, write ledes, make videos, and how to properly run an interview.
In the 1990’s, The Morgan Pawprint was referred to as “The Morgan Tower” or “The Igloo.”
Mr. Serenbetz was the Journalism teacher then and it was a semester class. The students wrote newspaper articles involving The Morgan School. Everything was 100% paper which made the process slower, resulting in the paper to be produced every 2 weeks to a month. Once printed, it was distributed to The Morgan School community.
John Madura, Head of the Tech Department, is an alumni at The Morgan School who wrote for “The Morgan Tower.” Madura explained, “We wrote about topics related to school, but occasionally we wrote about non-school activities.” He added, “The original school donated by Charles Morgan had a tower in the front of it, which is why it was called ‘The Tower.’”