Los Alamos Homecoming 2024 is underway and as the entire district has been dressing up and finding weird non anything-but-a-backpack things to carry their school stuff in, I thought it might be an interesting moment to look back at some of the first “public” schools in our town’s long history.
Truly, the major theme in the history of Los Alamos is education. It’s been the most consistent topic of concern in this town from the time before we WERE a town. I think one of the things I find most interesting about Los Alamos and school is that our first public school was the WPA Sandoval County Elementary School. WPA stood for Works Progress Administration. This program built almost 6000 schools during the 1930s as part of The New Deal public works program designed by Franklin D Roosevelt. The idea was to revitalize American job prospects through education, nutrition, access to academic and health testing (think basic vision and hearing tests) and also through nutritional lunch programs in schools.
Not that the kids of the Los Alamos Ranch School employees and the Pajarito Plateau weren’t educated prior to the 1930s. Several of the local families who were employed by the ranch school would take turns educating the children who lived in and around the area. But sometime between 1931 and 1935, that changed with the arrival of the Rousseau family.
AJ Connell hired business manager Fred Rousseau in 1931. Fred worked for Connell to manage the business side of LARS. But Fred’s wife, Edna Rousseau, was a schoolteacher. Connell asked Edna to take up a teaching position in the little stone schoolhouse located to the west of Ashley Pond and the Big House. Connell renovated the original Master Cottage, Master Cottage #1, for the Rousseau’s to live in, and the school building was newly built once she arrived on the scene.
The schoolhouse was located in the general vicinity of what would eventually become Central School during the Manhattan Project, (more about life at Central School in a future post!). The little stone schoolhouse was a rectangular building which had a little basement where a wood stove was managed by older schoolboys to provide heat during the winter so the poor students didn’t freeze!
The one room could be divided into two by a pleated divider, (sounds familiar to some of us!) and so there were two classrooms. Edna Rousseau was eventually joined by Amador Gonzales to teach grades 1-8. Records and reports from adults who had attended the school suggest there were around 20 students per year give or take a few.
A good number of the kiddos attending public school were Hispanic. Fermor and Peggy Church’s three boys attended as well as the youngsters of a few other Anglo families living on the plateau.
School was not only reading, writing, and mathematics. Former students remember play practice and performing A Christmas Carol for the holidays. Amador Gonzales taught the students to cut wood and build birdhouses. There were arts and crafts projects, woodburning, and music class with rattles and tambourines. During the cold weather, physical education exercise would be held indoors and some students remember playing pin the tail on the donkey when it was too cold for outdoor recess!
Interestingly enough, most young people at that time don’t recall a great economic hardship happening in 1929. Life at the ranch school was stable and in some ways, idyllic. The school was self sufficient at that time, providing for itself, living off the land and the work of the residents and employees.
Though the ranch school wasn’t bursting at the seams, they had enough students paying $2400/yr for tuition to support the families working on the plateau and sending their children to the public school. Tuition at the school for one student for one year was actually double the yearly salary of most of the employees! And yet, if you think on it, the employees and public school kiddos were fed and housed and part of a community that WAS the Los Alamos Ranch School. It’s a very familiar sort of pattern for most of us who grew up here.
Growing up Los Alamos seems to be a unique experience no matter when it happens! I consider myself blessed to have been a part of this community and I absolutely love talking Los Alamos History and Housing with anyone who is willing to have a chat! So when you’re ready to be a part of our community on the Pajarito Plateau or you’re ready to sell your current Los Alamos property and find another, give me a call! I’d love to chat with you!
I attended Central School!! Interesting history….thank you, Kendra!!!