Searles High School (Great Barrington, Massachusetts)

The history of education in Great Barrington can be traced to a period before the American Revolutionary War in the mid-1700s. Colonial settlers, highly valuing literacy, often supported a local schoolmaster with private donations or church sponsorship. The town's first allocation of public funds to support education occurred in the year of its incorporation, 1761. While an early sign of its commitment to education, it would be a century before the rural pioneer community could support a public high school. Throughout the region one room school houses were opening, focused primarily on basic literacy skills. In the late 1700s and early 1800s more organized efforts emerged through private academies with more advanced teaching capacities. Most notable was a school established by the three Kellogg sisters. The contributions of the Kellogg, Sherwood and Hopkins families to local education are significant. It was the inherited fortune of Mary Sherwood Hopkins Searles, niece of the Kellogg sisters, that funded the widely admired new high school building constructed in 1898.[1]

Great Barrington's first public high school was established in 1868, occupying a temporary site until a year later when a new building was completed.[2]

In 1898 an impressive new building was dedicated for the high school. This event proved so significant for the town that the school was named for its benefactor, and the date marks the founding of Searles High School. The school was named for Edward Francis Searles, whose deceased wife, Mary Hopkins Searles, was a Great Barrington native and had been the wife of Mark Hopkins, Jr., one of California's railroad barons.[3] Early in its history Searles High School served students enrolled from throughout the southwestern corner of the state, as well as from three Connecticut towns and one town in New York.

The new school building was dedicated January 21, 1898. Designed by Boston Architect Henry Vaughan. Known as a church architect, Vaughan collaborated with Searles on a number of projects. The three story, Queen Anne design was considered to be grand in proportions, exceeding local expectations and receiving acclaim beyond the Berkshire region. The building still stands today and has been the object of various reuse proposals, including that of a boutique hotel to serve the area's significant tourist trade. The new school was built adjacent to “Olympian Field”, a venue for athletic events and an earlier gift to the community from Mr. Searles.

In 1923 there were seven women and four men on the high school faculty to teach 305 students. In June 1935 the high school had its largest graduating class to date of eighty-six students. The increasing enrollment first led to discussions of constructing a new building for the high school, and eventually led to the regionalization discussions beginning in the late 1940s.[4] “The Blotter” was the first school newspaper. In later years the newspaper became known as “The Spectator”. The school's yearbook was “The Climbing Ivy”. Through its seventy-year history, school records document 3,927 graduates.

Upon the opening of the new regional high school and the closing of Searles High School, the 1898 building began to serve as a middle school.[5]

The 1957 edition of The Climbing Ivy yearbook, gives an account of student life, as the school entered its last decade.[6]

• W.E.B. Du Bois, sociologist and civil rights activist.[7][8]

Creating economies of scale was the rationale for the school regionalization efforts of the 1950s and 1960s. However, discussions around regionalization were complex and often contentious. Faced with increasing costs for maintaining adequate facilities, instructional personnel and curricular resources, some small rural districts felt pressured to explore consolidation with neighboring districts.[9] For over a decade into the mid-1960s, Great Barrington explored consolidation with partners to the west and south, including Alford, Egremont, Mt. Washington, Sheffield and New Marlborough. Ultimately, those towns formed the Southern Berkshire Regional School District, the first of many regional districts in the state. Great Barrington chose not to regionalize with these partners.[10]

The last class to graduate from Searles High School was in June 1967. The school did not actually close until April 1968, when the senior and junior classes moved to the newly completed Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington near the Stockbridge town line.[11] Economies of scale for rural districts and increasing student populations led to the closure of its high school, an outcome Great Barrington had debated for over a decade. While the new regional high school was located within the town's city limits, it was several miles to the north of the 1898 building's central location in the heart of Great Barrington's small downtown.

• History of Great Barrington: (Berkshire County,) Massachusetts, Charles James Taylor, 1882
• Save Searles School
• Hotel site review attracts belligerent crowd to Great Barrington Town Hall
• Berkshire Hills Regional School District