Remember When: A-K Valley high schools got their names in some interesting ways

Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series. Check back next Sunday for part two.

High schools in the Alle-Kiski Valley have all kinds of names for all kinds of reasons.

There’s topography, people, a fruit and even a popular song.

That’s right … a school was named after a popular song.

Let’s explore the origin of several of our local high school names:

Valley High School

When the New Kensington and Arnold school districts merged on July 1, 1965, the consolidation operated separate high schools for two years.

When the high schools united, a name was needed. Students from New Kensington and Arnold, which still operated as separate campuses, voted for a name. The New Ken students voted for Valley High, named after a song popularized by Bob Livorio’s Saturday morning radio show on WKPA.

“Valley High” was a song written in 1959 by married couple Bill and Doree Post of Wichita, Kan. It was about students preparing for their graduations and recalling memories from their high school years. Its popularity grew quickly. Students at Valley High School in Albuquerque, N.M., adopted it as their song.

Related:

• Part 2: Remember When: A look at more area high schools and how they got their names

The Posts wrote several other hit songs, including “Sixteen Reasons” for Connie Stevens. But by the time those songs made the charts, Doree Post had died of stomach cancer on July 24, 1961. Bill Post died in 2014.

Meanwhile, Arnold students had favored the name Northmoreland for the new school, but the New Ken students had the higher number of votes.

Northland and Ar-Ken also received votes in the September 1967 balloting.

Knoch High School

The school gets its name from Eva Knoch.

Initially, Eva and her husband, William, donated 50 acres of land near the Saxonburg-Jefferson Township border for a park. When it was found that Saxonburg didn’t have adequate funds to maintain the park, the Knochs asked that the land be returned to them.

After William’s death in 1951, Eva donated the land to the school system because she was a proponent of school district jointures of small, separate community schools.

The South Butler County School District was formed by uniting Saxonburg and Jefferson, Clinton, Penn and Winfield townships. In 1956 and ’57, the high school was located in Winfield and was called South Butler High School.

But in the fall of 1958, a new high school on the donated land became known as Knoch High School. Eva Knoch attended the dedication on Nov. 13, 1958, and saw the success of the school until her death in 1970.

In 2022, the school board, with approval from the Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf, officially changed the name to Knoch School District.

Knoch is one of four WPIAL schools named after women. Aliquippa, Jeannette and Frazier are the others.

Some other high schools

Riverview’s name is obvious, as both Oakmont and Verona “view” the Allegheny River.

Highlands gets its name because the terrain of the school district is similar to Scotland, according to the late Superintendent Nick Staresenic in an interview shortly before his death with the Valley News Dispatch.

Plum got its name from the time settlers arrived in the community and discovered plum trees along a creek.

The stream was called Plum Creek and the then-township, which is now a borough, took the name when it was chartered on Dec. 18, 1788. Subsequently, the high school took the name when it came along in 1939.