Miscellaneous - Coventryville Voters Hold Lively Session, 1931

1931

Coventryville Voters Hold Lively Session

Heated Discussion Ensues Over Matter of Centralization of Schools

 

A lively meeting of the taxpayers of the Coventryville School District [Chenango Co., NY] was held at the school house here Friday night.  The question at issue was whether the Coventryville District should become a part of the Afton Centralized School District or the Bainbridge Central District.  Petitions have been circulated here favoring both Afton and Bainbridge, and in some instances the same names appeared on both petitions.    Some of the signers of the petitions claimed that they did not realize what they were signing.  The meeting was called to straighten the matter out and several heated discussions developed.  It had been arranged, previously between Miss Jane Schenck, superintendent of the district which includes Afton and Coventryville, and Miss Mary Isbell, superintendent of the district which includes Bainbridge, ruled that no outsiders would be allowed to speak at the meeting.  For this reason, Attorneys Homer Owens and Julian Scott of Bainbridge, who were present, were not allowed to speak.  An attempt was made to read a letter from Lawrence Carroll of Afton and this was objected to.  George Comings was chairman of the meeting, and before the adjournment it was decided to give two petitions to Walter Lee, the Coventryville school trustee and he was instructed to circulate both petitions over the district, and that the winning district be submitted to the state Department of Education, at Albany.  Coventryville is so situated that the distance from here to Afton and to Bainbridge is just about the same.

Compiler Note:  The Coventryville one room school would remain in operation for at least the next 20 years until it was closed in the mid-1950s.  So it can be concluded that this issue took considerable time to resolve.