by David Green

When Benton and South Marshall middle schools close at the end of this school year it will bring to an end the academic service of the two secondary schools.

They were high schools prior to the consolidation of Benton and North and South Marshall into Marshall County High School beginning with the 1974-75 school year. They will be merged into the new South Marshall Middle School now being built on the U.S. 641 Spur southwest of Benton.

For the Benton campus, it will be a final curtain coming down on nearly a century and a half of academic tradition. The school’s origin is traced to Marshall County Seminary, which opened in 1869. The original building served as Benton High School from 1908 until mid-term of the 1934-35 academic year, when a new building was completed. That structure served as Benton High School until 1974, when Benton, North Marshall and South Marshall were consolidated into Marshall County High School.

From 1974 through 1994, the 1935 building served first as a junior high school, housing students in grades 7-9, and later as a middle school, with grades 6-8.

The present Benton Middle School building opened in 1994.

For South Marshall, it is a shorter heritage, but not necessarily a less significant one.

In its 18-year history, South Marshall High played its part in the progress of education in the county in the era that followed World War II and the opening of Kentucky Dam and establishment of Kentucky Lake. The former North and South Marshall high schools, like Benton High, were pressed into service as junior highs.

North Marshall High School led the way in the sequence of consolidations that have occurred in the county over the past 62 years, driven by superintendents Holland Rose and Reed Conder. North Marshall opened in the 1954-55 school year, the result of a merger of Sharpe and Calvert City high schools. Two years later, South Marshall opened, combining Brewers and Hardin high schools.

For nearly two decades, the two schools served students in the upper and lower halves of the county with spacious and modern buildings, bracketing the city school in Benton near the center of the county. The consolidated county high schools helped move Marshall County schools toward the level that Benton, with its long history of formal academic training, had established.

The larger city school, with as many as 43 seniors in 1941 and 58 in 1954, had been able to offer many academic and extracurricular programs not available in the smaller county high schools.

The opening of North and South Marshall high schools was a step on the way to the single high school that now serves the county, and opened up many of the expanded opportunities and services Benton High had previously provided.

The first round of consolidations came as Marshall County was emerging from the pre-war system of local community grade schools and high schools, most of which were all housed in a single building – or even a single classroom, in the form of a traditional one-room schoolhouse. One such institution, Griggs School in northwestern Marshall County, was operational until 1956, the year South Marshall High School opened.

Prior to World War II, eight high schools served the county. Aurora closed after the 1940-41 school year because of declining enrollment. Gilbertsville closed in 1940 because of the construction of Kentucky Dam. Birmingham closed after 1942 as preparations were made for the filling of Kentucky Lake, which now covers the site of the community. After the war, Benton and four county schools – Brewers, Calvert City, Hardin and Sharpe – continued serving the county’s students. As the county’s industrial base made great strides, the school system evolved to appropriately serve its population. The development of transportation systems made it possible to replace scattered local schools within walking distance of students with larger facilities, taking advantage of economies of scale to offer more opportunities for students than the small community schools could provide. The one-room community schools were phased out as larger facilities were built in selected communities to house the elementary grades 1-8.

Briensburg and Fairdealing schools were built in the late 1940s in the northern and eastern portions of the county. As late as the end of the 1950s, many rural and small-community schools in Kentucky served students in grades 1-12 on a single campus, sometimes within the same building. Benton and the five county high schools were among them. In areas of rapid population growth – such as Marshall County experienced with the building of the dam and the location of heavy industry below the dam on the Tennessee River – lower grades were sometimes housed in temporary classrooms adjacent to the main building.

There were no junior high schools during that period in Marshall County. Many students ended their formal education after the eighth grade and moved on into vocations, while the grade schools sent their other eighthgrade graduates on to one of the four-year high schools in the county or the city of Benton. By the time the three high schools were merged into Marshall County High, there had also been some consolidations in the lower grades. Briensburg and Gilbertsville elementaries were closed when a new Central Elementary was built in Draffenville and Hardin and Brewers were combined in a new South Marshall Elementary in Hardin. At that point, the three high schools were designated as junior highs, housing students in grades 7-9.

The new consolidated high school included only grades 10-12 until 1988, when a freshman wing was opened. At that point, the former junior high schools became middle schools, with grades 6-8, and the elementary schools at that point included grades 1-5 plus kindergarten. A new North Marshall Middle School was built in 2006 and the 1954-vintage facility was demolished, including the gym in which the 1959 Kentucky state champion Jets basketball team played.

The consolidation goes on with the new South Marshall Middle School. Benton and South Marshall will close, and both names, with the exception of the elementary schools

which will remain in operation, the names will fade and the traditions become part of history.

Change is usually a painful process. Earlier rounds of consolidation incited controversy, as many residents with longstanding community ties resisted the mergers.

Institutions of the former Benton Independent School District were slated for closure and consolidation into county schools before a 1988 lawsuit derailed those plans and preserved the schools.

By this point, the transition is less traumatic, but still triggers melancholy, or at least mixed emotions, for those with long ties to Benton High School. The list of alumni dates from the first three graduates,in 1913, to the 66 members of the final class of 1974.

The past season’s Marshall County basketball teams played tribute games in Benton’s Chambers Memorial Gymnasium and the South Marshall gym during the past season to commemorate not only the years that the Benton Indians and South Marshall Rebels played on those courts, but also the several seasons that the Marshals of the consolidated high school played at those gyms and the old North Marshall gym before Reed Conder Gymnasium was opened on the MCHS campus.

Chambers Gymnasium will be preserved, Superintendent Trent Lovett said, but the present Benton Middle School building is scheduled for demolition.

The fate of the South Marshall facilities is not certain. Lovett said possibilities included sale of the property for possible use as a branch campus of a regional college or university, or as a retirement or assisted living facility.

Lovett said there was some consideration given to moving the elementary school into the middle school building, but a number of utility issues and general renovations that would be needed might render that idea unfeasible.

The new South Marshall Middle School will move the county school system one more step along the consolidation route. That route is nearing a conclusion.

Lovett speculated that eventually the South Marshall and Jonathan elementary schools may be combined. Both facilities currently have declining enrollments and are far below he 300-student minimum size mandated by the Kentucky Department of Education to be eligible for new-school funding assistance.

“When the time comes,” Lovett said,” the ideal situation would be to have four elementary schools with enrollment of about 550 students each, the two middle schools and the high school.”

Central and Benton elementaries approximately fit that template with their present numbers, and mergers of Jonathan-South Marshall and Calvert City-Sharpe could fill out the scenario.