The new school year in Plymouth started last week, with the number of enrolled students roughly the same as it has been for the last several years. And despite the current rate of home building, the number of students, according to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, is expected to stay relatively constant.
That’s a very different environment from what the seven grandchildren of George and Lena Fornaciari (my grandparents) went through from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, when an exploding population means overcrowded schools, and uncertainty about even which school we would attend. It was an incredibly chaotic time for parents as well.
Plymouth’s greatest population growth was from 1960 to 1980. As crazy as the building is in Plymouth these days, we haven’t come close to the expansion of those years, when the population rose from 14,445 in 1960 to roughly 36,000 in 1980, an increase of 149 percent in just two decades. And unlike today, most of the new residents had school-age children.
As one of the oldest grandchildren, I entered the school system in 1968. When I began, Plymouth had five elementary schools (Hedge, Cold Spring, Oak Street, Mount Pleasant, and Manomet), one middle school (Nathaniel Morton), and a relatively new regional high school shared with the town of Carver (Plymouth-Carver High School, which opened in 1963).
I started elementary school at Cold Spring. Our house was equal distance between Cold Spring and Hedge and my parents were given a choice of where I would go. Mom chose Cold Spring because at the time it had a cafeteria, whereas students at Hedge walked home for lunch. By the time I reached third grade, the classrooms had become very tight and new classmates lived on streets I had never heard of.
I entered Nathaniel Morton in 1972 for grade 5. We were confronted with double sessions. Some students attended a morning session from 7:30 a.m. to noon, with others assigned to an afternoon session lasting from 12:30 p.m. to 5. This practice, in theory, would allow twice the number of students to be educated in a school building. In reality, it was a nightmare. Shortened learning and disruptions of normal school times served no one well.
Thankfully, a new middle school was already under construction. Plymouth Carver Intermediate School opened in January 1973; portions were unfinished, but it at least eliminated the double sessions at Nathaniel Morton. PCIS was designed by local Plymouth architect David Crawley and featured the “house” concept. Four pods or houses were grouped around a central library. Each house contained 14 classrooms, a conversation pit (yes . . . it was the ‘70s), a house master’s office, and a guidance counselor’s office. Each house was named after one of the country’s space programs (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Ranger) and had its own distinct color. The school also featured a commissary kitchen capable of making the lunches for all the schools in town – and something practically unheard of at the time in a school, a planetarium.
When I entered PCIS in the fall as a 6th grader, I was assigned to the unfinished Ranger House. Unfinished in that the walls were never installed and the dividers that did exist were rolling cabinets. As a result of overcrowding at the high school, I stayed in Ranger House through my freshman year (9th grade).
For my junior year at PCHS, some classrooms were in rented buildings downtown and my senior year was marred by – you guessed it – another round of double sessions. Seniors and juniors were in the morning session. We were dismissed by noon, but as a 17-year-old going to school at 6 a.m. was a nightmare.
I graduated in the spring of 1980 but in the fall Massachusetts voters approved Proposition 2½, which limited annual municipal property tax increases to that percentage. Plymouth was now faced with overcrowding and a budget crisis. The limited budget forced staff cuts, program cuts and cuts in extracurricular activities. My mom, who worked as an aide, was let go after eight years at Cold Spring.
My cousin Wendy is only a year younger than me, but her experiences were different. She attended Sacred Heart Elementary until she entered Nathaniel Morton for 6th grade. Grades seven and eight were at PCIS. Wendy enjoyed four years of high school at PCHS, but she had to contend with double sessions for two years.
My brother Mark entered the system in 1972, starting at Cold Spring, just as Plymouth was undergoing a massive wave of school building construction. But it still wasn’t enough. In addition to PCIS, four new elementary schools opened in consecutive years, starting with South Elementary in 1974, West in 1975, Indian Brook in 1976, and Federal Furnace in 1977. Despite opening all these schools, overcrowding was still a major problem.
Mark attended grades 7-8 at PCIS, at a fifth house carved out of the library and named Viking. Around the same time, the conversation pits were boarded over and repurposed as classrooms.
Entering high school, Mark would pick up where I left off, with double sessions for his 9th grade year. For his sophomore year, he was subjected to split sessions; seniors and juniors began early in the morning with the first years and sophomores joined them around 10. Lunches, gym and other activities were scheduled during this period to maximize the availability of classrooms. The upper class students would leave around 2 p.m.; the younger students stayed later in the afternoon. Overcrowding was “solved” at PCHS in 1984 by adding 14 portable classrooms.
Two years after Mark, my cousin Tony began school. Fearful of overcrowding, my aunt and uncle sent him to first grade at Sacred Heart Elementary, but he then entered the public school system in 1975 when West Elementary opened. Tony graduated from high school in 1986, but in the background a divorce was in the works as well as plans for a new high school for Plymouth.
Plymouth and Carver split in 1988, and my cousin Donna was the last in our family to graduate from the Plymouth-Carver system. It was a confusing year as Carver occupied the new Plymouth South High School while Carver’s Middle and High School were still under construction and Plymouth voters had failed to vote to raise the taxes needed to fund teachers’ salaries and furnish the building. Cousin Deb was the last of the grandchildren through the system. She spent grades 1-4 at West, 5-6 at Nathaniel Morton, 7-8 at PCIS, and 9-12 at Plymouth North.
Despite all these challenges, Lena and George’s grandchildren all survived and went on to become successful. For those of us who remained in Plymouth (five of the seven) our children attended Plymouth schools. My brother Mark taught at and eventually became the Vice Principal at South High, a position he will very much regret leaving as retirement approaches.
The teachers were the heroic warriors of those years. They coped with overcrowded classrooms, shifting grade placements, and endless uncertainty. As children, we adapted – more or less – and when I asked my cousins to recall when they attended which schools it was a struggle (and may not be correct) to recall the specifics. But favorite and inspirational teachers? That was easy. So, if you were a teacher in Plymouth between 1967 and 1991, my cousins and I thank you.
Architect Bill Fornaciari is a lifelong resident of Plymouth (except for a three-year adventure going West as a young man) and is the owner of BF Architects in Plymouth. His firm specializes in residential work and historic preservation. Have a question or idea for this column? Email Bill at billfornaciari@gmail.com