North Allegheny begins celebrating 75th birthday

In 1948, a loaf of bread was 15 cents, a movie ticket was 60 cents, the average cost of new house was $7,700, historical archives say, and the North Allegheny School District was born.

The district officially turned 75 on June 10. There’s been much growth since its inception in 1948, when Bradford Woods, Franklin Park and Marshall, McCandless and Pine townships formed the North Allegheny Joint School District.

Pine broke away in 1950 to create its own school district, and the word “joint” was removed in 1966 to form the name North Allegheny is known by today.

In 1954, what was then called North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School was dedicated with 33 rooms for grades seven through 12. The first graduating class in 1956 had nearly 160 students.

The school was built at the Cole Farm Site, 152 acres on Cumberland Road in McCandless that local township officials had bought for $30,000. The building is now North Allegheny Intermediate High School.

The present-day high school on Perry Highway was set to open in the fall of 1974 at a cost of $10.6 million, according to a North Hills New Record article from January 1973. The 2023 graduating class had 665 members.

North Allegheny’s communications department has spent more than a year researching the history of the district in anticipation of the 75-year anniversary. The school district’s 2023-2024 activities calendar will serve as a showpiece for what it has discovered.

“Researching North Allegheny’s 75-year history for the activities calendar was like opening a treasure chest of photographs, stories and memories,” said Brandi Smith, who leads the department.

She said staffers reviewed yearbooks, read newspaper articles, listened to stories from alumni, and visited the McCandless/Northern Allegheny Heritage and Cultural Center to select photos and information for captions, she said.

“The calendar will help families understand how North Allegheny has evolved over time, how our local communities influenced our growth, and learn more about the people who have made our schools what they are today,” Smith said.

The activities calendar is mailed to NA residents who have children in the district, but a limited number will be available at North Allegheny’s Central Administration office for community members, Smith said.

District administration and the NA school board will determine other ways to celebrate the district’s diamond jubilee, according to Smith.

With a robust enrollment of 8,420 students, North Allegheny has a $193-plus million 2023-2024 budget and employs more than 1,200 people, including more than 700 certified teachers. It has seven elementary schools, three middle schools, an intermediate school and a senior high school.

A one-room school house built in 1860 at the corner of Peebles and Duncan Road was the only school for 50 years in McCandless. It served grades one through eight with one teacher, according to the NA team’s research. A second school, Ingomar School, opened at Bellcrest and Ingomar roads in 1910.

Other small schools operated in the area prior to the NA school district being formed, including a four-room Franklin School in what was Franklin Township in 1936 and the Marshall Township Consolidated School in 1929.

NA’s research was aided by the McCandless/North Allegheny Heritage and Cultural Center, the Northland Public Library and the Detre Library & Archives at the Heinz History Center, among others.

Residents who would like to investigate more about the NA’s past 75 years can visit the McCandless/North Allegheny center, said Executive Director Abby Lucostic.

”There they can find a collection of NA memorabilia, such as old yearbooks, photos of the schools, sports memorabilia and uniforms and more,” she said.

NA memorabilia there includes the collection of late NA resident and local historian Joe Bullick.

Smith said the school district used some of the research of NA grad Andrew McLaughlin, a member of the Class of 2023, in creating the activities calendar. He wrote for the student newspapers NASH UpRoar and the NAEye.

”Ever since I visited Joe Bullick’s local history museum at McKnight Elementary School in 2nd grade, I have been fascinated by how NA developed,” McLaughlin said. “I was especially intrigued that beginning in the postwar era, the district was expanded quite rapidly to serve the growing North Hills population: between 1952 and 1974, nine of the district’s present 12 schools were either opened or rebuilt.”