The History of Lebanon School District: Lebanon High School

Written by - Angelica Bautista & Edited by - Naitzabel Lopez Rodriguez

Stevens Elementary School

As a student, teacher, or even Alumni of Lebanon High School, you may have pondered about the foundations of our school that we call home. While the question lingers within your mind, you may have also wondered this such as when our school founded? and who founded it? Let’s travel back all the way to the late 1800’s to find out.

During the 1800’s Pennsylvanian schools were private and families payed for lessons.

The school district started out as a private or church run schools in PA. According to Sherie Strohman, a volunteer for the Lebanon Historical Society, “ In 1852 the trustees of the Lebanon Academy transferred their building to the School Board with the understanding that it was to be used as a building for higher learning”. After some time, they (the school boards) gathered together to create the Lebanon Academy. Parents would pay for their kids to go and take classes. The Lebanon Academy was one of the more new and accepting schools that took students from various religions and cultures/backgrounds to integrate. This was the starting point of the Lebanon School District. The county created/commissioned a Lebanon education board, the board bought Lebanon Academy and started building in the community. During the onset there were separate girls high ( high schools specifically or schools in general ) schools and boys high schools.

At the time there existed 6 male schools and 5 female schools of different levels. The female schools near the academy were on 10th st.” Now, you may wonder how this relates to the foundations of our school? Well to get to that point you must dig deeper into the past when our public school district first started forming. — Sherry Struaman

It took a while for them to get to the point where they co-ed schools. It took awhile for schools to combine, when they started, it began small by having co-ed graduations and events. The graduation was held at the old Academy theater which is now the HACC campus. The building burned down many years ago, before that it was the Academy of Music. In the academy there was a large auditorium, this is where they held graduation because the schools in the past only had classrooms and did not have auditoriums. According to the Lebanon Historical Society, the first official graduation commencement was in 1872.

There were also other schools in the township such as the Lincoln School on Lehman street between 4th and 5th st. The Higgby School at 13th and Lehman, there were two Higgby schools, one at West Lebanon School District and the other in Lebanon School District. Subsequently, West Lebanon merged with Lebanon and became a singular school district. With no need for the second building; it became the West Lebanon Township municipal building that we know today.

Before and after picture of Stevens Elementary. The corner tower is the only thing that remains of the school itself after being burned down by a fire.

• There was also a Burroughs elementary school, which would have been across the Hyman Caplan pavilion. This building was used as an elementary school and a school to teach nursing. The school continued to have separate graduations until the 1960’s.
• In 1920 the first school band was organized
• The curriculum included classes for Latin and German in 1888–1900’s because of the heritage in the area. When students enrolled, they had the option of taking the English curriculum or the classical curriculum. *Other than language and math, in school they prepared boys to accomplish out in the world and girls were taught how to be good mothers and wives.
• Around 1935 we were originally referred to as “The Red and Blue”, “The Schlossermen”, the “Lebanon or LHS Gridders” or “Dribbers”. It was sought that the term “cedars” was used to refer to the basketball team, it was also used for the football team in their first game against Hershey Industrial school now known as the Milton Hershey School. This was documented in the 1936 Lodestone. The first time it was mentioned was in a pre-season tennis article on April 9, 1935. According to a research documentation titled “Origin of L.H.S “Cedars”” by Raymond T. Frey from the Lebanon Historical Society, they quote “The workout and practice drills for the next several weeks at least, will be held in the spacious gym floor, as the outdoor courts will not be in playing conditions for sometime. It is not known exactly where the “Cedar” court racketeers will play their next matches”. For a while the term was still not very popular but then on
• From 1933–1938 students had half day had to share high school between jr high and high.