Marion Unit 2 School District board is making plans to have the county board of school trustees to sell the building. It can be sold to the highest bidder or to another taxing body with a vote approval of the district.
Douglass School at 901 S. Holland, St. has 53 students in grades kindergarten thru six, two teachers, a custodian and a cook.
Douglass students mostly are residing in an area which would attend Logan School. The students, however, like those of any other area of Marion have the privilege of attending any school in the system, however, in the event of crowded conditions, the school system has the right to return a student to the school of his area.
The present Douglass School building was built in 1926, after a fire destroyed the former building. It is designed as a four-room school.
Miss Clara Kirk, the principal, temporarily has been assigned to the Logan kindergarten. Mrs. Russell Duncan, another teacher at Douglas, will teach fourth grade at Logan. Nelson Barnett, the custodian, will be assigned to the Junior High, and the cook, Mrs. Edna Ross, will work at the new Marion High School.
With the closing of the all black Douglass School, all grades will contain blacks in Marion. The junior high and high school have had blacks for many years.
Unit Supt Orland Stanley said the main reason Douglas is being closed is that the students’ being “divided into such small numbers is educationally unsound.”
The only reason the school has been kept open is that there has been insufficient room in other schools,” he said.
The new high school will open next fall, making the present building available for the junior high. The unit will be divided into a 6-3-3 system.
Stanley noted that at Douglass, Miss Kirk was teaching kindergarten thru second grade in one room, and Mrs. Duncan was teaching third thru six in the other.
“It is only one step better than a rural school,” the superintendent said.
He added that the school has not been considered segregated and that no black students have been turned away from other Marion schools. In fact, he said, some of the parents and students are not pleased that the school is closing because it means the students will have further to travel to school.
Both Miss Kirk and Mrs. Duncan have master’s degrees.
A breakdown of the enrollment at Douglass by grades is: kindergarten 7, first 10, second 10, third 6, fourth 5, fifth 6, and sixth 9.
Douglass School was named after former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. For decades this newspaper, like most people, spelled it with one “S” leading some to believe that is was named for Stephen Douglas.
Note: The first Douglass school was built around 1913 and burned in early 1920’s, rebuilt in 1926, closed as article indicates in 1965.
(Extracted from Marion Daily Republican article dated 05/01/1965; Photos from MDR articles; minor editing for relevance only by Sam Lattuca on 02/07/2013)