Kutz Elementary Remembers Rural Roots As It Celebrates 75th Anniversary

On Monday, Oct. 26, 1936, schoolchildren in Doylestown Township did something they had never done before.

The youngsters rode school buses to a brand new school on Turk Road in Edison. The Doylestown Township Consolidated School replaced five one- or two-room schoolhouses located in different sections of the township within walking distance of their students.

Seventy-five years later, the consolidated school building is still in use as the sixth-grade wing of , the oldest continuously operating school in the Central Bucks School District. The original section of Warwick Elementary dates from 1919, but the school was closed for several years in the 1980s. All other district schools are less than 60 years old..

Kutz staff and students are celebrating the diamond anniversary during this school year by throwing a birthday party, wearing 1930s-style clothing for a day, displaying old photos and memorabilia, presenting a retrospective slide show and holding an open house for Kutz alumni. Even the reading challenge asks students to read 75 minutes a week, instead of the district standard of 60 minutes.

"There is something magical about this being a community school," said Dr. Jeanann Kahley, who has been principal at Kutz since 1993.

Kahley said it is not unusual to meet families with two or three generations that attended Kutz, which is the district's only school in Doylestown Township.

Some people remember going to the original school, which served about 200 students in grades one through eight in a farming community with 1,400 people in 1936. The school opened with a principal who also taught eighth grade, five classroom teachers and a music teacher.

Today's school, which underwent several expansions and renovations between 1952 and 2002, has 630 students from kindergarten through sixth grade. In addition to the principal, there are 31 classroom teachers, 15 specialists (reading, music, gym, etc.) and 21 support employees.

The school was renamed in 1966 for Paul W. Kutz, who started as principal-teacher in 1941, and spent the rest of his career with the township, and later the Central Bucks, school system. Individual muncipalities had their own school boards, although some schools were jointly operated, until today's unified Central Bucks School District was created in 1966.

Kahley said she was surprised when first assigned to Kutz, since she had worked closely with Butler Elementary in Chalfont as a staff developer. But she quickly came to appreciate Kutz's deep community roots, which add something intangible to the educational process.

Two teachers who serve on the committee planning the anniversary said they, too, find the school's history appealing.

"I'm fascinated by the history of our school," said Stuart Wyss, a second-grade teacher for 16 years. He did research at the Spruance Library of the Bucks County Historical Society during the summer and put together a four-minute anniversary slide show that was presented at back-to-school night and student assemblies at the beginning of this school year.

Until now, Wyss said, he never realized Kutz was built to replace one- and two-room schools in the township.

"I didn't know about the existence of the one-room schools," he said.

Wyss not only learned about the predecessor schools, but visited and photographed each of them: Castle Valley, Edison, Pebble Hill, Sandy Ridge and Sunny Side. All are private residences today except for Edison, which is a country furnishings store.

Nicole Zuerblis, a reading specialist in her sixth year at Kutz, said "I was just amazed by how far back everything goes."

She often encounters school ties at parent-teacher meetings. "Everyone you talk to went to Kutz or is connected with Kutz," she said, such as one parent whose father used to drive a school bus to Kutz.

Anniversary activities

Kutz' anniversary committee has planned activities intended to be fun and educational. These include:

+ Students and staff will wear 1930s-style clothing to school on Friday, Sept. 23. This might be button-down shirts, long pants and leather shoes for boys and men, and dresses, skirts and sweaters for girls and women.

+ Teachers will bring in photos of themselves as elementary school students, to be posted on a bulletin board in a "Then and Now" display next month.

+ On Oct. 26 - 75 years to the day since it opened - the school will hold a birthday party involving students decorating cupcakes in their classrooms and singing "Happy Birthday" over the intercom.

+ An open house will be held in March for alumni to take school tours with student guides and to view Kutz memorabilia.

+ The anniversary will conclude with a "celebration assembly" in April for students and invited guests.

Wyss said some classroom activities also will be geared to the anniversary. For example, students may be asked to try a reading assignment from a 1930s or 1940s textbook.

While today's Kutz Elementary building is as up-to-date as any other school in the district, it retains some of its country heritage.

The 1936 one-story brick building, which is dwarfed by the latter additions, houses sixth-grade classrooms and some offices. The exterior doesn't look that much different than it did 75 years ago, although the entrance is no longer in the front.

The interior has been modernized with drop ceilings, fluorescent lighting, white boards and other features, but still seems like a 1930s school. The original bronze dedication plaque ("Doylestown Township Consolidated School, Erected 1936") is attached to a wall in the hallway that runs the length of the building.

The rooms have high wooden sash windows not found elsewhere in the school, hallway doors with wood-framed panes of pebbled glass, and wooden closets, some with cut-glass doorknobs and skeleton-key locks.

Kahley said the wing, at the far end of the school, was set aside for sixth graders.

"It gives them their own little haven," she said. "You get the feeling you're in the older part of the buildiing."

School consolidation

Before Kutz was built, Doylestown Township students attended five tiny schools, some of which dated to the mid-1800s.

By the 1930s, township school districts in Pennsylvania were closing their one-room schoolhouses and "consolidating" them into a single township-wide school. Doylestown Township was no exception.

The township school board broke ground for the consolidated school on April 27, 1936. An article in the Doylestown Daily Intelligencer noted the school cost $38,012, including the building, site grading and school equipment. The federal government paid 45 percent of the cost. Two school buses were purchased to transport pupils.

The budget for the five township schools was $19,941 in 1936, not including any costs associated with the new building, according to the article. This was funded by the property tax as well as a $3 per capita tax.

The consolidated school opened on Oct. 26, 1936 with about 200 pupils, who had started the school year in their old schools. The no-frills building had six classrooms for eight grades as well as offices, but no auditorium, gymnasium and cafeteria. The Edison Parent-Teacher Association and the National Farm School (now Delaware Vallley College) donated evergreens and shrubs for the school grounds.

Sara E. Hall was the principal and eighth-grade teacher. There were five other classroom teachers and one music teacher, all women, named in an Intelligencer article.

With the new school open, four of the five old schoolhouses were immediately auctioned off to buyers who intended to use them as summer homes or for business purposes. Castle Valley brought $1,375; Edison, the largest, $2,700; Pebble Hill, $1,975; and Sunny Side, $1,833, according to the newspaper account.

Kutz becomes principal

In September 1941, 28-year-old Paul W. Kutz was appointed principal-teacher, replacing Robert K. Schafer, the Intelligencer reported. Kutz was a native of Kutztown in Berks County, named after his ancestors. He earned a bachelor's degree at Kutztown State Teachers College (now Kutztown University) in 1935 and a master's degree at Penn State University in 1938.

The school's enrollment totaled 215, ranging from a low of 21 in the second grade to a high of 35 in the sixth grade. Kutz taught eighth grade and supervised the other five teachers.

While the article did not give township school salaries, the Intelligencer reported in 1941 the Doylestown Borough School Board hired several teachers at $1,300 a year ($25 a week) and a new high school principal at $2,100 a year ($40 a week).

After completing eighth grade, students could go to whichever high school was most convenient - they had to find their own transportation. For most Doylestown Township students, this meant Doylestown High School, located at Broad and Court streets.

The borough school board billed municipal school districts for non-resident students attending the high school. In 1941, the tuition charge was $8.77 a month per student.

The nine municipalities in the Central Bucks region, including Doylestown borough and township, banded together to build the $2.75 million Central Bucks Joint High School, which opened in September 1952 for grades seven through twelve. Seventh- and eighth-graders no longer attended the Edison school, now called Doylestown Township Elementary School.

Paul Kutz became supervising principal of a joint elementary school district for Doylestown, Buckingham and Plumstead townships during the 1950s. His wife, Martha, began teaching at the consolidated school in 1942 and continued there for more than 25 years.

In May 1966, the Doylestown Township School Board renamed the school after Kutz at a ceremony in the auditorium attended by more than 600 pupils, The Daily Intelligencer reported.

"We have selected the name of Paul W. Kutz because it's a name we can be proud of and it belongs to a man who has given most of his life to the betterment and progress of education in our school," said school board president William A. McBride.

The separate municipal school districts were dissolved and replaced by a unified Central Bucks School District on July 1, 1966. Kutz served as the district's assistant superintendent until he retired in 1975.

Kutz returned to his namesake school in 1986, when it held a low-key commemoration of its 50th anniversary. He died in 1998 at the age of 84.

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Anyone wishing to provide photos or memorabilia for the anniversary, or desiring more information, may contact the school at kutz@cbsd.org