A History of Millerstown Education

A History of Millerstown Education. Perry County Bicentennial. , In 1808, the Presbyterian Church served as the first School house in Millerstown. It was adjacent to the church cemetery on "Grave Street." The Borough enlarged the school in 1834 and combined it and a Juniata River school into one district, excluding the adjacent Greenwood Township., As the town's population grew, a large two-story frame school building was constructed on High Street in 1856. It exists today as an apartment building. A decade later an addition expanded the capacity to several hundred students. The first graduation of five students from the 12th grade was held in 1887. In 1925, a new frame building was built one block north of the original High Street School., In 1948, Greenwood Joint School District formed, merging the Millerstown school district with those of Greenwood and Tuscarora Townships. Liverpool Township joined the district in 1949. The 1925 school was updated and used until 1954 when it was replaced by a new Greenwood High School at 405 East Sunbury Street. In 1980, a new elementary school was constructed, completing a modern educational complex with enrollment of approximately 750 students., The Juniata Valley Normal School, a Venture in Higher Education , Silas Wright, local educator and author of the first history of Perry County, established a regional normal school in Newport in 1867, moving it to the High Street schoolhouse in Millerstown in 1868. A later historian H. H. Hain wrote that the "location provided easy access from every section of the county, and from the east and west on the Pennsylvania Railroad," enabling student transportation to Millerstown. With the availability of higher education, Hain observed "dozens of students became educators, lawyers, physicians, ministers, bankers, business men and intelligent farmers and homemakers." At one time, 160 students enrolled for the five-month sessions, which cost $60 in tuition. The normal school closed in 1878 but the building remains today.