The crowd gathered at the Athletic Hall on Yosemite Avenue for Madera High School’s commencement exercise in June 1903. Folks had to climb the stairs to the second floor that night, as they had for the past six years, but this would be the last time. Madera was going to have a new high school, at last.
Those commencement exercises held in Athletic Hall that Friday night were well attended. The audience was so large that some of the late-comers could not find seats and had to stand until the ushers brought chairs from the outside for their accommodation. The gallery at the end of the hall was crowded with people.
In contrast to modern graduation exercises, this one was rather calm and sober. County Superintendent of Schools Estelle Bagnelle presented the diplomas to the following graduates:
Mary Alice Cunningham, Ella Reid, Myrtle Saxe, Ethelyn Westfall, Emelia Loinaz, Grace Loinaz, Annie E. Hussey, Mabel Metz, and Ruby Nell Metz. She then acknowledged that this was the last graduation to be held in Athletic Hall. The 1904 graduation would take place in a brand new building.
Madera had always taken the education of its youth seriously. The town was not even a year old when the first school house was built in 1877. Shortly thereafter, a second school was built on the west side of the Southern Pacific tracks, and for years, Madera’s young scholars attended either the Eastside or Westside schools.
Entonces sucedió lo inevitable: los políticos separaron el condado de Madera del condado de Fresno, y una serie de eventos importantes le siguieron, entre ellos, la formación de un distrito de escuelas secundarias.
In the summer of 1893, two very pubic spirited women, Mrs. R.P. Mace and a Mrs. Wear circulated a petition in the new county seat calling for an election to determine the will of the public in the matter of creating a high school in Madera. This effort brought immediate results when the new county government, as well as the voters, approved the plan overwhelmingly. It was decided that Madera High School would become a reality.
Ann Nicholson fue elegida como la primera directora de la escuela y tuvo mucho trabajo. En primer lugar, tuvo que supervisar la remodelación del segundo piso de la Escuela Westside, donde la escuela secundaria impartiría clases.
Los pasillos y vestuarios se convirtieron en laboratorios, y la estructura se preparó en general para albergar a la promoción de 1897.
Además de estas funciones, la señorita Nicholson tuvo que prepararse para enseñar todo el material del curso, ya que era la única empleada de la escuela secundaria.
La ley estatal en ese momento dictaba que la matrícula de cualquier escuela secundaria no podía ser inferior a 10; por lo tanto, fue con gran alivio cuando la primera clase de 10 estudiantes de Madera High School fue recibida en la escuela el día de la inauguración.
For 10 years, Madera High School conducted classes in the old Westside School, and then on Aug. 22, 1903, the Madera Union High School District was formed. One of the first actions of the new Madera High School board was to award a contract for construction of a new high school at 6th and L Streets. The facility in the old Westside School was simply inadequate.
La junta decidió construir un edificio de dos pisos, de granito y ladrillo, con sótano. El primer piso tendría cuatro entradas y contendría cuatro aulas. A la derecha de la entrada principal estaría la sala de juntas de los fideicomisarios y, a la derecha de esta, la sala privada de las maestras. La oficina del director estaría a la izquierda.
Un cuarto privado para los maestros estaría a la izquierda del despacho del director. Un pasillo atravesaría el edificio y todas las habitaciones tendrían guardarropas.
On the second floor would be a large assembly room 56 by 40 feet, with a stage 40 feet in the clear, and anterooms on either side. A big skylight would admit light from overhead and eight windows would add more light.
En este piso estarían ubicadas también la biblioteca, un aula y un laboratorio de física y química. Habría descansillos a mitad de las escaleras para que fuera posible que los profesores pudieran ver los patios y las aulas desde arriba.
El edificio, por supuesto, se terminaría en el interior con pino amarillo, ya que Madera suministraba el mejor pino amarillo del mundo. Los planos especificaban que los escalones del pórtico y los contrafuertes serían de granito, y el edificio, cuando estuviera terminado, seguramente sería uno de los edificios escolares más atractivos del estado.
In the years that followed, Madera High School was added to — taken away from — doubled, and then split. Now the town has two high schools with a combined population of over 5,000 students and is about to add a third campus.
To be sure, Madera has come a long way since its high school classes met in that little frame building on Sixth Street and the commencement exercises were held up on the second story of Athletic Hall.