Waterford School District
Waterford School District is a school district headquartered in Waterford Township, Michigan.
History
Waterford Township lays claim to the first public school in Oakland County. That school was established in 1821 on the shores of Silver Lake with seven students. That number grew to 13 when its first permanent home, a log schoolhouse, was dedicated the next year. Ira Donelson, for whom Donelson Hills Elementary is named, was elected as the township's first Supervisor of Education in 1835, the year Waterford Township was organized.[1] As the township grew, more schoolhouses were built, including Drayton Plains in 1865,[2] Four Towns in 1866 and Waterford Center in 1869[3]
While one-room schoolhouses were the norm during the rural 19th century, multiroom school buildings became the norm as Waterford transitioned into a suburban community. The first was the Waterford School, built in 1910 and expanded in 1927[4] and later to be renamed Waterford Village Elementary; Four Towns and Waterford Center moved to new and larger school buildings within the next few decades, while the new Drayton Plains School opened in 1920.[5] The hope was to consolidate these schools in a single district with the possible addition of a high school—Waterford's high school students then attended either Clarkston High School or Pontiac High School—but the Great Depression and then World War II postponed consolidation until 1944,[6] when the present Waterford School District was formed. By then, the Williams Lake School, the fifth of the original schools in the district, was completed in 1943.
Attention was then turned to building a high school for Waterford Township, which doubled in population during the 1940s. For the first several years after Waterford Township High School was established in 1947,[7] kindergarten through 6th grade attended Four Towns, Waterford Village, Williams Lake or Waterford Center, while the high school was based at Drayton Plains School until a permanent home, on the corner of M-59 and Crescent Lake Road, was completed in 1950.
At its peak in the 1970s, Waterford School District contained 27 elementary schools, three middle schools and three high schools—Waterford Township which closed in 1983, Kettering and Mott. Today, there are nine elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools.
Schools
High schools
- Waterford Kettering High School
- Waterford Mott High School
- Waterford Durant High School
Middle schools
- Mason Middle School, North Campus (6th grade Mason students)
- Mason Middle School, South Campus (7th and 8th grade Mason students)
- Pierce Middle School
- Although Crary Middle School was a Middle School made in the Waterford School District, It was closed after 2010 Summer Period and remodeled into an Alternative School.
Elementary schools
- Adams Elementary School
- Beaumont Elementary School
- Burt Elementary School
- Cooley Elementary School
- Donelson Hills Elementary School
- Haviland Elementary School
- Houghton Elementary School
- Knudsen Elementary School
- Riverside Elementary School
- Sandburg Elementary School
- Schoolcraft Elementary School
- Waterford Village Elementary School
Waterford Village is the oldest school in the district, created in 1950 when Waterford Township High School moved to a new building due to overcrowding at the 1927 Waterford School building where Waterford Village Elementary is located.
Early childhood centers
- Stepanski Early Childhood Center
Alternative schools
- Waterford Alternative High School: Crary Campus
In August 2011, the Waterford Board of Education composed of John Himmelspach, Joan Sutherland, Robin McGregor, Heather Halls, Bob Piggott, Rob Seeterlin and Rob Petrusha, unanimously voted to rename the alternative high school to Durant High School, after William Durant, the founder of General Motors.
