Tacoma Public School has announced that it may close schools in order to save money. Foss is the high school they are considering and elementary schools with less than 300 students are also possibilities. These elementary schools are Franklin, Lyon, Roosevelt, Stanley, McKinley, Wainwright and Geiger. Geiger has had a program change and has been taken off the table. I thought over the next week or so, I’d take photographs of the mentioned schools and use them as my new places of the day.
Read more about possible school closures at :
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/01/19/1509242/foss-students-fret-over-possible.html#ixzz1Bn2OnEp6http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/01/19/1509242/foss-students-fret-over-possible.html#ixzz1Bn2OnEp6
Today’s school is Mary Lyon Elementary at 101 E. 46th St.. Their mascot is the lion. The school was constructed in 1910 and has a student population of about 270. Their official website states “The school is named after a 19th-century farm girl who was born on Feb. 28, 1897 who eventually became a teacher and established the first women’s college-Mount Holyoke-in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Mary Lyon Elementary was originally a one-room, wooden portable and has developed into a brick and stucco structure with 18 classrooms, along with classrooms in adjoining portables that were added to accommodate Lyon’s population growth.”
A photograph of the building as it appeared in 1924 can be found here:
http://search.tacomapubliclibrary.org/buildings/bldg1image.asp?j=1&o=4&n=6743&i=4814#text
Over the years, the building has had extensive renovation, as can be readily seen when comparing the historic photo from Tacoma Public Library to the new photograph.
