Goodbye Conneaut Valley Middle School

Goodbye Conneaut Valley Middle School.

Formerly Conneaut Valley High School when it produced its first graduating class in 1955, Conneaut Valley School Board announced several months ago its closure at the end of this school year, June 5.

Not bad for a civic building to have lasted 69 years, even with renovations and its re-dedication as a middle school with a    cornerstone stating 2014.

But sadly, it was lipstick on a pig.

With a declining local population and tax base, in a rust belt county, in a rust belt state, in a rust belt portion of our country, it was only a matter of time before the school district decided to tighten its belt once again, this time shuttering one of its schools.

Time moves on, I guess. But sometimes, people don’t.

I guess I’m one of them. As “fortune” has it, I currently work there as a contracted employee, and it’s sad to imagine the site this fall without kids and the lumbering buses that would bring them there. 

Minus my mother, my immediate family all graduated from CVHS, with my father being in the inaugural class of 1955, my brother graduating in 1981 and myself in 1982.

Our photographs—along with every other graduate of the school up to 2012—when Conneaut School District, moved the upperclassmen to Linesville High School, adorn its walls.

At a recent alumni class celebration there (the final one to be held at the school), I asked an alumni official what would happen to all the framed pictures of the graduating classes.

“Put them in storage, I guess,” was the answer.

My heart sank. 

To think: All the smiling graduate’s faces so full of excitement and promise at entering the adult world that I see everyday at work, to be locked in a dark room somewhere unseen.

On the school’s marquee standing beside Route 18 (which still lists itself as the “Indians” not the “Eagles,” changed for political correctness), a message reads “Last ½ Day June 5th. We will miss you, Valley.”

From all the children who once went there—whether in the 1950’s, ’60’s, ’70’s, ’80’s, ’90’s, ’00’s, teens, ’20’s—or the kids now to be shipped to Linesville this fall:    

Yes, we will all miss you, Valley.

Gregory Knepp

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