Five into one

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories about Jay County’s consolidation to a single high school. The series will also include a look at each of the five high schools that merged into JCHS, and will run on Saturdays through mid-August.

Graduation ceremonies in the spring of 1975 marked a watershed for education in Jay County.
That year, the final graduates of five high schools would make their way across the stage to receive their diplomas.
One era ended, and a new one began.
Portland High School, Dunkirk High School, Redkey High School, Bryant High School and Pennville High School ceased to exist. Jay County High School was born that fall.
It wasn’t the first time that consolidation had led to a closing of local schools — by 1975 Gov. I.P. Gray, Madison Township and Poling had already been shuttered — but the move to a single county high school was contentious. And echoes of the debate can still be heard now and then 40 years later.
“It was quite a topic there for awhile,” said Jack Houck, who served on Jay School Board from 1974 to 1978 and had been a one-high school supporter from early on.
That’s an understatement, to say the least.
For the better part of a decade, the one-school/two-school debate could be found in every coffee shop, at school board meetings and on the editorial page of The Commercial Review.
The initial spark came in November 1965 when an Indiana University study suggested that a single high school was the best approach for the county’s future.
But the roots went back further.
Schools and school governance in Jay County were a hodgepodge before the 1960s. In 1961, there were two consolidated districts — Portland-Wayne Township Schools and Knox-Penn Schools — and two city systems, Dunkirk and Redkey. But there were also nine township school districts run by township trustees.
A local study committee headed by Redkey’s Jack Payne proposed merging all of those into a single county system, but that idea quickly met with opposition. A special election was held on consolidation in 1963 but was challenged legally by opponents. A second special election in 1964 saw approval.
Trying to get a handle on its future, the new Jay School Corporation contracted with I.U. to study its facilities, its demographics and its needs and make recommendations.
That’s when the real controversy began. One key recommendation: “Construction of a new senior high school for all Jay County students in grades 10 through 12 in an educational park of 70 to 150 acres near the junction of State Roads 67 and 26.”
Those who had voted for consolidation after receiving assurances that their high school would not be closed felt hoodwinked. The Commercial Review, which had supported consolidation and editorialized that a single high school was unlikely, was embarrassed editorially.
And some were simply outraged.
“Tempers flare over single school,” said a headline in The CR months after the I.U. study’s release. A Dunkirk Steering Committee, led by businessmen Fred Butler, Robert Manor and Harry McDonald, proposed an alternate plan that would call for two high schools, one of them to be built at a site about 3 miles north of Redkey.
Others came to the conclusion that a single school was the most practical and manageable way to go.
“We were for one school,” recalled Houck. “We tried to get our story across.”
At times, it was even difficult for those following the story to know which direction the board would take.
Bill Fenters, who served on the board from 1968 to 1972, recalled that the board first approved the one-school option.
“I made the motion to go to one school,” he said.
But following the vote, the board balked at implementing its own decision. Board members opposed to one-school dragged their feet on any expenditures — such as land acquisition — that would move the project forward.
Eventually, after months of back and forth, the board opted to submit a two-school proposal to the Indiana Department of Education’s Division of Schoolhouse Planning for approval.
That plan called for an expansion of the existing Portland High School, transforming the existing Dunkirk High School to a junior high, and building a new high school in Dunkirk.
It was submitted near the end of the year, and the board hoped for quick approval early in 1970.
Instead, the state vetoed the plan.
Board members received word on April 29 of that year that state officials felt the two-school plan was extravagant. It would, the state said, pose an undue burden to taxpayers and “would only partially solve the problem.”
One week later, the board approved a three-year building construction plan that included a single county high school.
Jay County High School would open its doors to students in the fall of 1975 and its first graduates would walk across the stage to receive their diplomas in 1976.
“It worked out,” said Fenters. “The loss of schools was the hardest thing for people to get over, but the kids were over it in nothing flat.”