In 1915, Woodrow Wilson served as U.S. President. Typhoid Mary, working under a pseudonym, was sentenced to lifetime quarantine after infecting an additional 25 people while she cooked for a New York hospital. Dwight D. Eisenhower graduated from West Point with a 2nd Lt. commission. That same year, Ellis High School seniors published The Prairie Thistle yearbook.
In this annual, students documented college prep, domestic science and art, agriculture, normal training, manual training, and commerce course work. The local paper mentioned the Kansas State School Superintendent and High School Inspector approved these classes and ranked Ellis High School in the First Class.
This acknowledgement benefitted graduates. Those who successfully completed the College Prep course were admitted as university freshmen without having to take the entrance examination. Those completing Normal School courses received a high school diploma and a two-year State Teacher’s Certificate. In addition to aiding individuals, the school received an apportionment of $1,000 for maintaining courses in Home Economics, Agriculture, and Normal Training. This amount equals approximately $31,356 in today’s economy.
In addition to previously mentioned classes, students could enroll in typewriting and commercial arithmetic. The forward-thinking board, placing music on par with regular studies, gave credit for outside work in music. The primary source stressed that work occurred under supervision of the school and competent instructors.
The 1915 Prairie Thistle also contained the seniors’ last will and testament, pictures and descriptions of seniors, sports photos, predictions, club news, a list of graduates, and alumni notes detailing what past graduates were doing in 1915. Historically significant, candid photos depict the last high school class to graduate from the stone school building.
Ellis-area railroad and agricultural pursuits continued to prosper. According to historian Eileen Langley, in 1916, the district built a brick building north of the stone school, establishing the older site as the grade school with the new brick construction designated as the high school.
Ellis may have been far from the WWI battlefields of Europe, but war burdens soon combined with those the Spanish influenza epidemic created to do more than fill hospital beds and cemetery plots. One of many 1918 cancellations included the alumni banquet, according to Maxine Bradbury.
Regaining momentum after WW I ended, regional communities, including Ellis, approved bond issues to build new high schools. Note dates on old school buildings to verify area-wide examples. Upon voter approval of a $100,000 bond, Ellis’s board chose a site across Big Creek on West Adams Street, now 11th Street. According to July 1926 Board Minutes, members met at the brick high school to determine necessary changes before moving the grade school into the recently constructed north building.
This 1926 meeting led to alterations in the Ellis skyline. Once the physical transfer of students and materials from the stone school to the brick one occurred, the board elected to raze the stone building. Although the school proud citizens dreamed and built now exists only in old photos, masons incorporated its locally quarried limestone into several homes and a church in the community.
Board minutes didn’t state the newer buildings helped maintain their budget, but they managed to educate Ellis students with an operating budget of $40, 070.55. This included salaries and operating expenditures.
History reminds us nothing is static. World-wide and local changes clearly affected Ellis education.
Madorin: History of Ellis Schools, part 10
Madorin: History of Ellis Schools, part 9
Madorin: History of Ellis Schools, part 8
Madorin: History of Ellis Schools, part 7
Madorin: History of Ellis Schools, part 6
Madorin: History of Ellis Schools, part 5
Madorin: History of Ellis Schools, part 3