Preserving a piece of local history
As Porterville Unified School District officials excitedly prepare the Future Ready Lab at the site of the historic Citrus South Tule Elementary School, they also want to preserve as much of that school’s history and relay that to the students for generations to come.
Officials met this week with some community leaders to get input on just what history should be included in the tiny school house. Citrus South Tule was founded in 1874 and was one of the oldest schools in Tulare County until it could no longer continue on its own. The school board there asked Porterville Unified to absorb the school district and school site and that was accomplished three years ago.
Last year, the district announced a unique partnership with Qualcomm to set up a futuristic science and engineering lab for students, somewhat similar to SCICON in the mountains above Springville. SCICON is for outdoor learning, while the facility at the old school site will be state of the art computer and technology learning. Plans are the learning center will be visited by the district’s seventhgraders. About 32 students at a time will spend a day at the facility and its Future Ready Lab. Students will rotate in and out, just as is done at SCICON. The district has about 900 seventh-graders and eventually, the district may make the special learning center available to feeder schools as well.
That unique science and computer lab will utilize the newer classrooms at the school site on Success Valley Drive, just south of Success Lake, because those classrooms are relatively new and earthquake compliant. The old school house, with a bell on top, had not been used as a classroom for years, but it is a piece of the local history that school officials hope can be made into an interactive museum of the school and area.
It was fun to be a part of the discussion on how to preserve the old school and what part of the local history should be told inside it.
There are many ideas, but space is limited. One thing officials like Pathways Director Cindy Brown would like to see included is a history of mining of this area and some of those who played a significant role in that, such as William Pitt Bartlett, for which Bartlett School got its name.
There were others, wrote local historian Bill Horst, such as the Brovellis, Pontis and Depaolis, miners from Slavonia and Italy who came here for jobs.
School officials also hope to tell a bit of the local history, and especially the school which celebrated its 140th anniversary in 2014.
It appears the sky is the limit in terms of ideas. School board trustee Sharon Gill was excited about the plans, saying that passing on all the history is special for children who don’t know the history of this area. I agree. It seems too many people forget our history and Porterville has a lot of history to tell. The idea is the history shown and told at the school house will only compliment what visitors to the Porterville Historical Museum can find.
Other suggestions for the museum were to include a piece on Native Americans, cattle, the Tule River, possibly Success Lake, and maybe an academic wall of fame of those from Porterville who distinguished themselves in the field of science and engineering.
It definitely appears the school district and Qualcomm both are strongly behind the idea of somehow incorporating the tiny school house where children began only with books, paper and pencils more than 100 years ago, can be tied to the classrooms next door with some of the most modern tools available to educators today.
These are excitng times in the local schools and the evolution of this unique learning lab and the development of the museum only add to the excitement.
With the first sessions at the old school site set to begin Sept. 7, officials are moving as quickly as possible to set up the museum, but know it will be a work in progress for many years to come. But, it will tell an important part of this area’s history.