Home Page     Meriden Rural &  Jefferson West Alumni   History

In 1859, the first school district was formed. A schoolhouse was built and classes were taught the same year by Miss Elizabeth King at Mount Florence. It was called the Rutty School, believed to have been located 1 ½ miles southwest of the Meriden (NE 75th — the site of the L. W. Rutty, Sadie Carden Miller, and Johnnie Miller farms). Luman Rutty taught there for eight years. A new public school district was organized by county superintendent J. B. McCleery, March 1, 1871, and the first meeting was held in the Rutty school house on March 30, when the board was elected (David Tripp, director, F. P. Monfort, clerk, and George Hensley, Treasurer).      The board was instructed to sell the building and to proceed with plans to build a new school. The total cost was about $1,200 and the school was ready for possession by late 1871. The site chosen was on the southeast corner of W.E. Rice, Hines, and Petesch farms on NE 82nd street. The first term consisted of 3 months, taught by Miss Rills Boies with 13 boys and 17 girls attending. The school enrollment increased to 60 pupils by 1879 and the building was overcrowded (it being only 22x32 feet in dimension). Consequently, a special meeting was held which resulted in selling and vacating the site for a larger building.      On January 21, 1880, a $3,000 bond was approved to construct a two-story building on the east side of Meriden, where the elementary school stands today on east Main. During the course of building, school was held during the 1881-82 term in “Metzger’s Hall,” a room over E. W. Metzger’s store. The new school opened in the fall of 1882 with a district enrollment of 200 (the majority attended regularly, which required four teachers who were paid from $30 to $65 per month for a five-month term). Prior to 1905, the district added a two-story section on the east side of the building. The west section of the frame grade school built in 1882 was torn down in 1938 to make room for a new four-room brick grade school. The east part was torn down when the new grade school was ready for use in the 1939-40 term. Between 1958 and 1960 a gymnasium and other additions were made. In May 1960, the grade school sustained heavy damage from the tornado and was repaired. The past 30 years have seen several additions made to sustain the increasing enrollment.      Country schools added to the enrollment of the high school and later, as they closed one by one, to the enrollment of Meriden’s grade school. Names of some of those schools are Bolz, Dix, Kious, Mulligan Mount Bethel, Rock Creek, North Star, South Star, Seal, and Unity.      In the fall of 1905, the first high school courses were added and plans called for a two-year high school, however, before a class graduated, the course of study changed to a four-year curriculum. The high school classes from 1909 through 1919 graduated a total of 88 from the 1882 frame building.      The Barnes law passed by the U. S. Congress was the first law granting aid to high schools. In 1918, Meriden Rural High School was organized - a joint district involving parts of Shawnee, Jackson, and Jefferson counties organizing with the city of Meriden - to become the first rural high school in Jefferson County. In 1919, a brick high school was built in the 300 block of South Palmberg. A gymnasium was added in 1937. A total of 50 classes graduated from this building between 1920 and 1969.      In 1970, redistricting resulted in combining Rock Creek, Ozawkie, and Meriden to Unified School District #340. The high school was renamed Jefferson West High School and moved to their new building on Miller Avenue. In the fall of 1996, a new high school building was built on Condray Street, across from the Meriden Cemetery. The former high school building on Miller Avenue was converted to house the Jefferson West Middle School students.