As reported by Libby Ross:
On Wednesday, September 5, the Historical Society of Shawangunk and Gardiner sponsored an informative talk on the One-Room Schools of Shawangunk at the Wallkill Reformed Church. The evening was made memorable by the presentation and careful research of Elaine Weed and her husband Ed, and the reminiscences of former students and teachers who stood one-by-one to recount details of their school days, remembered as if they were yesterday.
Thirteen one-room schoolhouses were established in Shawangunk in 1812, about 3 miles distant from each other, so that no child would have to walk too far. The children were mostly between the ages of 5 and 16, grades 1-8 in a single room. Old timers at the meeting told of walking a mile to school, of pot-bellied stoves, of doors freezing shut, children marooned in the school for two days in the middle of a snowstorm, lunch pails, government-supplied pea soup, and dedicated teachers.
"The teacher knew your family and everything about you. If you stayed at home she wanted to know why." Parents resisted closing the one-room schools, but eventually every district voted in favor of centralization and school busing, and by 1943 another tradition of country life had yielded to modernization.