Middle school celebrates 30th anniversary

BY TALI ISRAELI
Staff Writer

Faculty members at the Marlboro Middle School dove deep into their closets and found some of their grooviest clothes to wearduring a celebration of the 1970s. The middle school, on Route 520, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. MARLBORO - It was the year that Jimmy Carter was elected president, the nation celebrated its bicentennial and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was an acceptable form of punishment. It was 1976 and it was the year the Marlboro Middle School opened on Route 520 near Wyncrest Road.

Pupils were wearing tie-dye T-shirts and bell-bottom jeans, and listening to the sounds of The Eagles, Kiss and the Bay City Rollers.

In January the 1970s returned to the Marlboro Middle School for a celebration of that groovy decade. Students and faculty members listened to the sounds of the '70s in the cafeteria, watched "Star Wars" on a family movie night and dressed up in clothes from that historic decade.

The students also participated in a trivia contest in which they were given photographs of the seven teachers who taught in the middle school 30 years ago and are still faculty members. The students had to figure out which teachers matched the pictures.

"The kids had a great time figuring out who they were," said Pat Nieliwocki, principal of the 1,184-pupil school.

A special week in February celebrated the 1980s and in March the 1990s will be recalled. An April celebration will honor the current decade. In May the school will hold a "Dance Through the Decades," which will be an evening event for the students.

Nieliwocki said she decided to celebrate the school's 30th birthday because it "builds school spirit and school unity."

As part of the yearlong birthday celebration, Barbara Gallo's sixth-grade social studies students worked on a research project to learn more about the year the school was dedicated.

The three-story Marlboro Middle School, which opened on Sept. 13, 1976, is on a 47-acre tract on Route 520.

Architect Jules Gregory designed the 146,000-square-foot building as three separate wings designed to be independent from one another.

From 1976 through 1988, Marlboro's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade pupils were housed in the building. In 1988, sixth-graders were moved to the elementary schools. An addition was built to the middle school in 1998 to accommodate a growing enrollment. After the Marlboro Memorial Middle School, Nolan Road, opened in 2003, sixth-graders were returned to the middle schools.

The Marlboro Middle School mascot, the Marlboro Hawk, was selected in 1966 in a student survey at Central School (now the Frank Defino Central Elemen-tary School), which was where sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students attended school prior to the opening of the middle school. When the Marlboro Middle School opened in 1976, the Hawk became part of the new building.

As part of the social studies project, the students collected school memorabilia from 1976 including yearbooks, pictures and newspaper articles, and they prepared a retrospective of the school's 30 years. All of the memorabilia that was collected has been displayed in cases in the main hallway of the middle school.

Included in the display are pictures of the school being constructed; a commencement program from the first graduation in 1977; a diploma and yearbook from that year; a photograph of a woman who was in the first graduating class of the middle school and a picture of her daughter who currently attends the school; a newspaper article announcing the dedication of the new school; a class list naming the boys and girls in separate columns; a middle school band program from December 1976; and a keychain that was given to those who attended the school's dedication ceremony on Dec. 4, 1976.

The keychain, which bears the date of the ceremony, the school mascot and the phrase "Spirit through Progress," was designed by Susan Roma.

Roma is one of several faculty members who have been teaching in the school for 30 years. When asked what she believes has changed the most, Roma said the population in the district has grown and the philosophies in education have progressed over the years.

"I teach totally different areas of art than I used to," she said.

In the 1970s, Roma said, crafts such as pottery and weaving were popular subjects in art class.

Now her students learn more about fine art, including drawing and painting. She added that the areas of art studied in her class relate more to academic subjects than they used to.

Technology is another aspect of education that Roma said has changed dramatically over the years. She said students in the 1970s used their hands to participate in activities such as shop class and home economics.

Now, Roma said, technology is incorporated into many classes, making participation only a click on the keyboard.