History: Local: School Index

Templeton Middle School

transcribed and edited by Michael R. Reilly

last updated 12/02/2010

Templeton Middle School opened for the first time in August 1969.

A listing of the original TMS teachers for 1969-70 and the grades they taught. I have consolidated two different teacher listings showing teachers working in 1969, BUT the ones in bold red I have questions about. Did they actually start in 1969, perhaps as substitutes, or is one or the other record in error? The one that generated the most red was a listing composed in 1994 for their 25th anniversary.

SLAHS has no yearbooks from TMS at all to verify!!!

Maple school celebrates 50 years

By Thomas J. McKillen
Managing Editor, Hometown Publications, Sussex Express News

The Maple Avenue School community took time to look back at the very beginning during a Nov. 16 program marking the school’s 50th anniversary.

“Happy birthday to an absolutely incredible school,” Superintendent Kathleen Cooke said during opening remarks at the program. “This is truly an incredible place for children.”
“If you think about the generations of children that have gone to this school and the successes they have today, it’s because of the dedicated, high quality staff both in the past and present that help to make this happen,” Cooke added.

Cooke added the school wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the community both through referenda to finance construction and additions onto the school and through parents volunteering for various school events.

Principal Kristin Koeper-Hamblin set of scene of what Sussex and America was in November 1960. At that time, John F. Kennedy had just been elected president of the United States. Also:
•The cost of a first class postage stamp was 4 cents;

• The Broadway production of “The Sound of Music” had won a Tony Award;
•The average cost of a house was $12,500;
•A new car cost $2,600;
•Gasoline was 25 cents a gallon while a loaf of bread was 20 cents.
In school, boys wore button down shirts and pants while girls wore skirts to at least  the knee. Also no shorts or jeans were allowed in school.

“Can you imagine that?” Koeper-Hamblin said.

Koeper-Hamblin noted that President Kennedy had issued a special message on education: There was an “extreme shortage” of teachers and classrooms, with portable classrooms installed at schools nationwide as a temporary fix. At the time, the starting teacher salary was $3,000 annually while the average teacher salary was $5,140 annually.

At the time, the Hamilton School District was served by two elementary schools. Rather than add on to to two schools, the district proceeded with a new school that became Maple Avenue School. The groundbreaking was May 2,1960 on land that was previously a farm, and a farmhouse was still nearby. The new school would become a t-shaped, one-story structure that was 25,140 square foot and cost $10.50 per square feet for a total cost of $359,000.

Classes at the new school started on Sept. 6 and it initially housed students through the eighth grade. Additions were added in 1964, 1966 and 2001.

In terms of teaching, Koeper-Hamblin noted that federal-state education policy called for research-based instruction which focused on critical thinking and collaboration. The proposal initially drew resistance, but now there is a strong emphasis on those skills.

“These are the very skills we need to be successful in the workforce today. One can only imagine what might have happened if those skills were the emphasis 50 years ago,” Koeper-Hamblin said.

She said the Maple community is appreciative of the School Board’s efforts to maintain low class sizes, keep facilities in top condition and keep instruction “cutting edge.”
Koeper-Hamblin also noted that changes in classroom materials, as Polaroid cameras were replaced by digital cameras, mimeographs were replaced by photocopiers, microscopes were replaced with digital microscopes, chalkboards and colored chalk was replaced with whiteboards and dry erase markers.

“Throughout the last 50 years, staff at Maple Avenue School have been committed to providing hundreds of thousands of Maple Avenue children with quality education,” Koeper-Hamblin said.

The program featured a 50th anniversary song preformed by a choir of students and a video presentation of past staff. Rita Petchel, who taught at Maple from 1970 to 2006, noted she had options between positions at Maple and in schools in Milwaukee and Cudahy.

“The best decision I made was to come to Maple Avenue School, by and far,” she said. “I think we were a ‘learning community’ before that phrase became popular in education.”
Current music teacher Sarah Plahman said she “jumped at the opportunity” for a position in the district.

“The staff is so (supportive). I can’t believe I’ve been here a month,” she said.