From 1981: Tychsen Recommends Merging Middletown's High Schools.

The following article is from exactly 30 years ago today, published in the Hartford Courant, on January 30, 1981
---------------------

Because of rapidly declining enrollment, the city’s two high schools should be merged into one, ending a 49-year-old rivalry between the two institutions School Superintendent Alfred B. Tychsen recommended to the Board of Education Thursday night.

Tychsen recommended that by 1985 Woodrow Wilson High School shouldbe the one city school to have grades 10-12. Middletown High school would be converted to a junior high school for grades 7-9, as would Keigwin Middle School.

The old wing of Woodrow Wilson Middle School and two other office buildings would be turned over to the city. Keeping Wilson Middle School would require $5 million in repairs, Tychsen has said.

The middle schools now have grades 7 and 8. The two high schools have grades 9-12.

Tychsen said the conversion would save about $1 million annually, including $403,000 the first year in staffing costs, part of which involves the loss of seven teachers.

Some of Tychsen’s reasons for choosing Wilson for the high school are that it is larger and has better music and industrial arts facilities. It also has the Vocational Agricultureal Center, which would cost about $700,000 to move to Middletown High School.

The athletic facilities aren’t as complete as at Middletown High, but improvements would be made to upgrade them.

About 20 persons attended the meeting. Tychsen said the decision was an agonizing task, arrived at on the basis of the enrollment decline and the projected savings in operational costs.

He also said, “We want to avoid becoming so small that it would be difficult and very costly to continue the programs we want to continue to offer.” He said advanced courses would become either “cost prohibitive or impossible to offer in a high school with about 450 students.”

The school board decided in November that two options were feasible: keeping the eight elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools as they are, or having one high school.

Tychsen’s recommendation is expected to be a highly emotional issue in this city, where strong ties to both high schools exist among students and alumni. In 1979 Stillman Elementary SChool and Central Middle School were shut down because of a smaller student populations [sic], and those closings were met with a public outcry.

The two high schools together can hold 2,000 students. This year 1,529 students fill both buildings, but that number is estimated to plummet to 641 by 1991 for grades 10-12.

Before the present Middletown High School was built in 1973, voters in three referendums voted down having one high school for the entire city.

Woodrow Wilson High School was built in 1956, with additions added in 1962 and 1975.

The debate among the board members to close a high school began last year. In May, Tychsen gave the board four possible options. The other two alternatives were discarded in November, on Tychsen’s suggestion. They were for one academic high school and one vocational high school, but in that setup the educational opportunities would greatly differ and social and transportation problems would result.

The other choice was to close one of the eight elementary schools, but even with a projected loss of 482 elementary students by 1984 it would be tough to predict in what grades and schools the loss would occur.

One high school also would solve the existing problem of a racial imbalance between the two schools. This year Wilson High School’s minority population is 16.3 percent and Middletown High School’s 17.6 percent.

In the next few months the board will hold public hearings on the issue.