Stroudsburg High School
1988-1999Main Street
Stroudsburg, PA
When I first arrived at Stroudsburg, I was 33 and the first female assistant high school principal. In fact, I was the first female high school assistant principal in the entire county. In 1992, I became the principal, again the first female in this position.
There were 1200 students in the school when I started. By the time I left, there were 1500 students. We had the whole spectrum of kids. There were rich kids and poor kids; some lived in mansions, others in section 8 housing and a few lived in their cars. About 27 different languages were spoken. All levels of intellectual abilities roamed the hallways
We had too many kids who had already done jail time. It’s hard to impose juvenile school rules on a kid who has already survived jail. We had band kids who had a high school experience similar to kids in the 1950’s. There were kids filled with innocence and naiveté and kids who had too much street smarts for their own good.
Sports programs, school musicals, scholastic scrimmage teams, science Olympiad teams, newspaper staff, student council and band took up most students’ free time. Our Science Olympiad Team placed first or second in the state seven times while I was there. This was no reflection on me, as I barely understand Newton’s First Law.
Our sports teams entertained everyone in the community. Our Friday Night Football games brought in crowds of 2500-3000 people. Our basketball games were dangerously packed in our small gym. The Mountie maniacs lead us in cheers and irritated the visiting fans. The band won competitions very year and filled their practice room with trophies. Our school musicals were so good, we considered ourselves to be off-Broadway, even though we were 1 ½ hours away form the Big Apple. Our student newspaper and yearbook won awards. Service organizations helped out the needy and poor in the community. There was lots of good stuff going on in school.
But when I was there, the community was experiencing some growing pains. Our community was becoming a bedroom community for New York City. Some parents moved here to get their kids away from the challenging environment that too many urban schools suffer. As one parent told her son after he had started a fight, “Leave our garbage behind. Don’t bring it in to this school. We left Brooklyn to get away from all of this violence.”
For years, this community was firmly planted in generations of known families. Most white, Christians and hard working, there wasn’t much variation. But that was slowly changing. First, the Italians slipped in. Then the Blacks rolled in and than the Latinos and the Asians followed. Once I was in the hallway with lots of students and I was the only one not speaking Spanish. All of this rapid change caused racial problems.
When I left, in 1999, some people wanted to work out these differences while others wanted the outsiders to go away. I don’t know if and how these issues may have been resolved. But when I look at my former students’ posting on Facebook, many of them comment that they would like to go back to their high school days “when everyone got along.”
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