Remember When: A look back at how the Alle-Kiski Valley's school districts were built

With school beginning for many students across the Alle-Kiski Valley, it’s a good time to look at how the configuration of local school districts today could have been vastly different if initial proposals were followed years ago.

For instance, on Dec. 17, 1962, Allegheny County school officials proposed a high school consisting of students from Tarentum, Fawn, East Deer and Frazer.

These merger proposals all were looked at after the implementation of state Act 561 of 1961.

The purpose of the act was to consolidate about 2,700 community school districts in Pennsylvania. The goal was to merge the existing districts into about 500 school systems.

The state Department of Education vetoed the proposal that would have left the Harrison-Brackenridge School District — popularly known by the contraction Har-Brack — alone, along with West Deer.

Instead, we ended up with Highlands and Deer Lakes, though counties had a much larger say in school district configurations then.

Another proposal had the Oakmont School District dissolved and consolidated with Plum, while Verona would go with Penn Hills.

Outraged, community leaders in Oakmont and Verona, though rivals on the athletic field, hatched an idea to merge both of those community school districts. The state went along with it, and the Riverview School District was born.

Perhaps the most bizarre idea locally was to have Arnold and Lower Burrell form a school district and New Kensington and Upper Burrell unite for another district. Several meetings were held in 1958 between Arnold and Lower Burrell education officials.

That configuration was disallowed because the municipalities didn’t share common borders.

Finally, the New Kensington-Arnold School was formed July 1, 1965. Lower and Upper Burrell came together in 1960 and educated students up to ninth grade until the high school was built in 1964.

In those days before the school districts consolidated, each community school district educated students up to eighth grade. If there was a high school in your community, you went there. Students outside the municipality paid tuition to go to a local school.

For instance, the Harmar School District educated students through eighth grade. After that, they mostly went to Springdale, Oakmont or Aspinwall high schools. In 1965, the Allegheny Valley School District was formed, and all Harmar students have belonged there since.

The most cumbersome merger was Kiski Area.

In 1958, school director Alphonse A. Uskuritis was in charge of consolidating nine community school districts. He invited Vandergrift, East Vandergrift, Avonmore, Hyde Park, Oklahoma and the townships of Bell, Parks, Allegheny and Washington townships to send three representatives each to initiate merger talks.

The 27 school board members were winnowed down to nine, and Vandergrift and Bell-Avon high schools were merged to form Kiski Area.

The high school opened in 1962. Washington Township High School resisted for a time but eventually came on board in 1966.

Fox Chapel consolidated the municipalities of Aspinwall, Blawnox, Fox Chapel, Sharpsburg and O’Hara and Indiana townships in 1961. Sharpsburg stayed on its own until 1969.

Armstrong County had designs on combining into one school district and having north and south high schools. South would have merged Freeport, Ford City, Leechburg, Apollo and Elders Ridge. But Freeport, whose new high school was 2 miles from town, took the matter to court and won.