Reader's question has Answer Man dusting off the cranial cobwebs
Apr. 29—Dear Answer Man: Where was the old Skyline Elementary School building located? I saw it listed on the RPS website, but I couldn't see it's address. — Curious Ken.
Dear Ken,
This is what I get for not answering something more completely, and it certainly took me on a trip in the Wayback Machine.
For something that I don't just know off the top of my head, I generally search the Post Bulletin's archives. The first thing I found was a
Day in History story from Feb. 1, 2023,
where the diligent Loren Else noted that in 1973, the Post Bulletin mentioned that four elementary schools — Haverhill, Skyline, Bandel and Hadley Valley — would close due to declining enrollment.
Then, of course, there was
my own mention of Skyline on Tuesday of last week,
as a school that had been boarded up and is used, basically, for storage now.
None of this gave me the school's location.
I Googled (yes, that's part of the process) but the only thing related to a school and the word "skyline" is the fact that Rochester Beacon Academy, a charter school, is located just on Skyline Drive Southwest.
Had the former elementary school become a charter school? Alas, that was not the case. So, I kept digging.
The obvious resource at this point was RPS itself, and the very helpful John Carlson, chief administrative officer for RPS, got me the address.
Well, to answer your question, Ken, is that Skyline's address is 815 36th Ave. SE, which puts it just north of — across U.S. Highway 14 from — Eastwood Park, and just to the west of Rochester Public Schools' Facility Services Building.
Here's a bit more about Skyline.
Carlson said Skyline, which was referred to as "Eastwood" in some notes. The school was officially closed in 1976 along with seven other schools: Bandel, Burr Oak, Haverhill, Hillside, Horace Mann, Northrop and Oronoco.
According to Olmsted County property records, the elementary school was built in 1950 and has an interior space of 7,404 square feet. It has two outbuildings on the same parcel, both with 1,608 square feet of space. The building is owned, still, by the school district.
"As a very small school ... it would be almost impossible to do much with that these days," Carlson said. He added the building probably had only five or six classrooms and a small office. He doesn't recall even a gym or kitchen in the building.
"One of my colleagues told me that when he went to school there as a child they dismissed them to walk home for lunch, something that's not done today at the elementary or middle school levels," Carlson said.
By comparison, the new Harriet Bishop Elementary School built in 2022 has roughly 100,000 square feet and was designed to educate about 720 students. Makes you wonder how many kids could fit in that old Skyline building.
In fact, from 1973 through 1981, 12 schools were either closed or converted for other uses. Some were sold. Others found district uses ranging from becoming a community education center (Northrop) to being storage (Skyline), and some continued as places of learning, but just for other groups of students.
While my article from last week indicated the Skyline building does not have heating or air conditioning now, it was built with HVAC, so that wasn't always the case.
Thus, Ken, endeth my lesson on Skyline Elementary School. It wasn't a school for long, but it's still providing a service.
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