Marshfield School —____—

owned and operated by the same family for years, were being purchased by Veterans returning from the war. As amenities, such as electric lights, indoor plumbing, and central heating became available to rural homes and in the schools, a dramatic change from the one-room school was about to take place.

On June 2, 1959, a special meeting was held to evaluate the school system in the district and the possible movement of the senior pupils to another school, or building an additional room onto the present school. At this time, the decision was made to transfer grades 7—10 to Parkdale school. Government was prepared to assist with transportation costs. And so it was, for the first time, pupils of Marshfield School District were being publicly transported to an outside location to further their education. Cecil Stetson was contracted by the Board of Trustees to transport the pupils to Parkdale School.

On May 11, 1960, a special meeting of ratepayers was held at the school at 8:30, advanced time, with Mr. Athol MacBeath as chairman, to discuss building the new school. Mr. Wallace Wood moved that a new two-room building be built to replace the existing school, seconded by Mr. Heath Foster and passed by vote, 9 voting in favour and 7 abstaining. It was moved by Ray MacCallum, seconded by Cedric Ballem that $20,000 be voted towards the building of the new school, this amount to include a government grant. The following were appointed to work with the trustees: Stanley Scott, Heath Foster, and Cedric Ballem. An advertisement was to be placed in the newspaper for purchasing and moving the present school. It was acquired by Harry Dunning and moved to the Dunning property, opposite MacBeath’s driveway, where it remains to this day. The Dunning property is now owned by the MacBeath family.

1960—65 - Teachers: Mildred Rogerson, Carol MacCallum, Gail Carter, Reg Johnson, Mary Lawlor, Sally MacDonald and Marjorie Boswell.

1961 - Grades 9 and 10 attended Parkdale school.

Becoming Part of the Larger System On April 30, 1963, a special meeting was held with 17 people present. Mr. Jack Carr acted as chairman and read the results of the questionnaire

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which had been mailed out to taxpayers re: the building of a new high school. After considerable discussion, a vote by ballot, counted by scrutineers Mr. Dennis Saunders, and Mr. Alec Scott resulted in 14 “yes” and 2 “no” in favour of the new high school which would accommodate grades 9-12.

In 1964, Marshfield joined with several other rural communities in the establishment of Charlottetown Rural High School. Students, who until now, upon successfully passing the grade 10 entrance exams, advanced to Prince of Wales College or St. Dunstan’s University. To complete Junior Matriculation, that is Grades 11 and 12, these two grades were now included in the public school system and big yellow buses became part of the morning and afternoon landscape.

1969 — The next step toward consolidation took place when Marshfield-Dunstaffnage became one school district with a single board of trustees.

It is of interest to note that school board meetings were exclusively in the hands of the men of the community, even though, in 1917 by legislation, women became eligible to serve as school trustees and were entitled to vote at school meetings. All trustees, and indeed, all in attendance at school board meetings were men. On the other hand, since the early forties, women, being recognized as having superior skills in recording minutes and book-keeping, acted as secretary. Marshfield’s school secretaries included Mrs. LHD Foster, Mrs. Ernest Foster, Dorothy MacFarlane, and following the consolidation of the Marshfield and Dunstaffnage Schools, Mrs. Allison Stewart acted as secretary. Since the early part of the 1900’s teachers were almost exclusively female.

1965—1970 - Teachers: Ruth Rogerson, Heather Jones, Barbara Bruce, Lyma Eldershaw, Loring Raynor, Sharon Scully Doyle, Mary Rowe, Patricia Rowe.

1970-1972 - Angela Corcoran, Nadine Rowlings, Sharon Doyle, Sally Hughes, Mary Rowe.

The Most Dramatic Change The most dramatic change of all to our rural school system came about in 1972, when all autonomy was taken from our long standing identity and responsibility, with the formation of five school units, responsible for the governance and administration of all Island schools.