| Tri-Valley Central School | |
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| School front entrance, 2007
"Leading Students to Success" (high school), "Building a Foundation for the Future" (middle school)
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| Address | |
| 34 Moore Hill Road Grahamsville, NY, 12740 United States |
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| Information | |
| Funding type | Public |
| School board | Tri-Valley Central School District |
| Superintendent | Thomas Palmer |
| Principal | Robert Worden (high school), Mrs. Killian (middle school), Dr. Linda Widomski (elementary school) |
| Staff | 177[1] |
| Grades | Pre-K-12 |
| Enrollment | 2005-06 |
| Number of students | 1,221[1] |
| Kindergarten | 74[1] |
| Grade 1 | 78[1] |
| Grade 2 | 95[1] |
| Grade 3 | 93[1] |
| Grade 4 | 97[1] |
| Grade 5 | 90[1] |
| Grade 6 | 102[1] |
| Grade 7 | 100[1] |
| Grade 8 | 93[1] |
| Grade 9 | 121[1] |
| Grade 10 | 98[1] |
| Grade 11 | 92[1] |
| Grade 12 | 88[1] |
| Average class size | 19[1] |
| Student to teacher ratio | 9:1 |
| Language | English |
| Campus type | rural |
| School Colour(s) | Red and blue blue |
| Communities served | Towns of Neversink, Denning |
| Graduates | 82[2] |
| Website | Tri-Valley Central School |
Tri-Valley Central School is located on NY 55, near Rondout Reservoir, east of the hamlet of Grahamsville in the town of Neversink, Sullivan County, New York, USA. It educates students from pre-kindergarten to twelfth grade in the Tri-Valley Central School District, which serves not only the town but much of the adjacent town of Denning in Ulster County. It gets its name from the three streams that rise in that area of the Catskill Mountains: Rondout and Chestnut creeks and the Neversink River.
The original school building, currently used by students and faculty in the high school grades, dates to the early 1950's and faces the church and cemetery in the Grahamsville Historic District just across the road. It was built on the site of the former Grahamsville one room schoolhouse. It has been built onto twice since then to create the present middle and elementary schools, which combine to create a C-shaped structure with a parking lot in the middle.
Shortly after the beginning of the 2007-08 school year, a confrontation between a school security guard and a student led to an unusual student protest that made international news.[3] School policy prohibits students from carrying their books, school work and belongings around in backpacks between classes, since they can be used to conceal weapons.[4] Girls were allowed to carry purses, and some began carrying large ones that could hold almost as much as a backpack.[5] When some boys complained to the principal that this loophole was a form of gender discrimination, the school announced the policy would be amended to limit the size of purses students could carry.
Some girls interpreted this to mean that all purses would be forbidden. Since they relied on them to discreetly carry sanitary napkins and tampons when menstruating, they wondered how they could do this in that instance. Rumors swept the school that they would only be allowed to carry purses during their menstrual periods.[4]
On September 19, security guards were doing a sweep to enforce the rule. A ninth grader was among several students called out of a class to see if their bags were within the new rules. She said that security guard Mike Bunce, upon seeing her bag, asked her if she was having her period. She was upset and told her mother about it that night. Some other girls may also have been asked the same question.[4]
The next day, girls at the school began wearing necklaces made of tampons and purses made from tampon boxes as a protest against this invasion of privacy. Some boys wore sanitary napkins taped to their shirts as a show of support.[4] A fellow classmate of Martin's, Hannah Lindquist, claimed principal Robert Worden threw her out of his office and told her she was "part of the problem" for wearing an o.b. tampon box necklace to a meeting to discuss a student who might have been suspended for her protest. Another male student was arrested and charged with public lewdness, a misdemeanor in New York, after he streaked through the school wearing only a paper bag over his head in what he claimed was his protest against the backpack policy.[4]
The school board eventually placed Bunce on paid administrative leave at the beginning of October while it decided the future of his employment.[6] Bunce had previously been forced to resign from the police department in nearby Monticello, along with its then-chief, for operating a process-serving business while on the job. A month later, the district fired him.