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Date Posted: 12:41:03 09/11/06 Mon
Author: Dave Agresti
Subject: Central High Teachers

Syracuse Central High School Teachers
1903 - 1975

Using the 51 available editions of the Central high school’s yearbooks from 1922 through 1975, copies Central’s monthly student publication, The Recorder, Syracuse newspapers and other academic documents, information was gathered about the teachers and faculty of this high school in Syracuse New York. 695 personnel of Central were found with known beginning and ending dates of employment through the viewing of photos in yearbooks, articles about individual teacher’s lives and accomplishments, and retirement stories about these people who were employed at this high school. Overall, 44% of the school personnel were males and 56% were females.

The earliest known photo of the faculty was a 1905 newspaper picture of a gathering in front of this school, a frequent location of many of these snapshots over the years. In this photo of the faculty were 40 females and 9 males. “Miss” was associated with 39 of the females while 1 was listed as “Mrs.” Apparently at this time in our society most teachers were unmarried women. In later decades this trend was reversed as most of the women teachers were married. Only one woman by the name of Nadler, the librarian, was listed in the yearbooks as “Ms. in 1972. There were about 25% of the women who had no prefix before their name so their marital status was not known. Men were listed as “Mr.”, “Dr.” or “Professor” or had no prefix to their names.

Having information about the first and last appearances of the faculty in the yearbook allowed the opportunity to determine the extent of employment at this educational institution. Reflecting back on our parent’s generation, it was common to find people who held one job for one company for 30 to 35 years. Personal observation over the years has shown this to have greatly changed in our fluid and mobile society. The following is a chart showing the extent of female and male faculty by decade and the average number of years of their being associated with Central high school.

Clearly the longest tenure at this school was in the early decades for both females and males. By the 1920’s females had nearly twice the years of employment as the males, but this returned to approximately the same extent by the 1930’s. The 1940’s, following World War II was the greatest change for both sexes. From that point onward the extent of employment by school personnel decreased in each decade. With this high school closing in 1975, the highest extent of employment would have been 6 years, at best.

The teachers with the longest tenure on the Central faculty, 43 years, were Miss Mary Mahoney who taught both English and History from 1928 through 1970, and Miss Alice Murphy, teacher of Commercial Business from 1930 to 1972. The Male teacher with the longest tenure was George Berry with 39 years from 1931 to 1970. He initially was an English teacher, then Vice Principal of Central and then Principal of The Technical component. Of the faculty who had the longest employment (30+ years), 25 were females and 6 were males.

Central high school was virtually an all-white school for most of its history, both in students as well as faculty. The first known Black student was in the graduating class of 1930. From the 1930’s through the 1940’s less than 1% of the student enrollment were Black students. In the 1950’s Blacks representing 2% of the total classmate population. In the 1960’s Blacks comprised 11% and in the 70’s, Blacks were 26% of the student enrollment. In its last year of operation Blacks were 36% of the total enrollment.

The racial composition of Central’s teachers reflected its student extent for most decades. The first Black teacher was Mrs. Josie Abrams who taught Business (1961-1969). She was followed by 27 other Blacks who were in positions from administration, teachers, to support staff.

Custodians and Cafeteria staff were seldom represented among Central’s personnel until 1960 when their photos and names were in the yearbooks until 1969. Some of the employment positions were not ones found in the early years. In 1970 the school had its one and only School Resource Officer, Donald Goodrich. Social Workers began also in 1970 with Betty Barker. Finally, again in 1970 Attendance officers were involved to check up on the truants. In 1972, turmoil in schools in general resulted in the employment of staff to monitor who comes into school. With Central’s location in the downtown area it was within easy access to the public to stroll into school for non-educational reasons. Corridor Aides and Hall Monitors were the staff from 1972 through 1975 to serve as “Bouncers” to the uninvited.

Finally, an evaluation of Central faculty who had previously been students at Central was researched. Linking female faculty names to past student graduation records was the hardest task as those who got married before becoming a faculty member had different last names and this made the task difficult in any of those occurrences. 23 former students were found to have been on the faculty of Syracuse Central high school. While the first listed person graduated prior to 1903, the beginning date of this school at its downtown location, this teacher was included as she proceeded this date by graduating from Syracuse high school, the only school in the community at the time. It appears that English teachers seemed to have some attraction to want to return to the scene of the grammar (school) compared to any other position.

CENTRAL’S STUDENTS WHO BECAME
CENTRAL TEACHER

1900 Grace Burpee (1900-1939) English
1904 Julia Brennan (1922-1956) English
1908 Walter McIntosh (1953-1957) Principal
1909 Anna Lieberman (1922-1927) French
1911 Elsie Barrows (1922-1952) English
1913 Jeanette Lanigan (1922-1955) Art/Drawing
1915 Marie Jones (1937-1955) Business
1918 Frieda Cole-White (1937-1957) English
1921 Anna Hueber (1947-1956) Art/Drawing
1922 George Berry (1930-1970) English
VP & Tech Prin.
1924 Jesse Ross (1947-19510 Vice Prin.
1926 Ida Aginsky (1954-1970) Business
1927 Kenneth Beagle (1945-1969) Business
1928 Gertrude Silverman (1937-1947) Latin
1930 Eleanor Behm (1956-1972) Home Econ.
1931 Diltz Berry (1946-1950) Science
1931 Carmelita Power (1962-1970) Nursing
1933 Margaret Dwyer (1930-1953) English
1941 Edwin Lukens (1955-1967) Physical Ed
1946 Peter Helig (1960-1961) Physical Ed
1952 Emanuel Breland (1969-1975) Vice Prin.
1954 Jean Szezypien (1962-1964 English
1961 Kathleen Niles (1970-1975) English

Missing in this documentation are many of the staff in the early years up to 1944. It is assumed that an additional 100 staff at Central are yet to be located in this research project. An Excel spreadsheet of all 800 Central faculty has been prepared and is available to persons interested in examining this documentation.

Dave

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