My elementary through high schools had no features other than A/C. Then again, it was Las Cruces NM, so not having AC would almost certainly have lead to massive health issues considering the climate.
Oh, and 2 window mounted A/C units, similar to what you would use in a normal bedroom window do NOT begin to be enough for the portables that I had classes / homeroom in all three categories, sadly. Especially not with 30ish students packed in there. At least they kept the May weather in the mid 90s down to the mid 80s, but damn those sucked.
Come to think of it, I think there actually was an elevator in my high school. The two story main building didn’t have one, but if I am remembering correctly I think the building that housed the gym and auditorium did. And I think they must have added an elevator to the main building when they renovated it in the late 1990s after I graduated, as the ADA would have required on by then.
A few of the buildings in my high school had air conditioning (and the “mobile classrooms” had it), but that was a minority of classrooms. The two biggest buildings were unairconditioned. That was something I know they added just after I graduated.
I was coming in to say that my grade/elementary school had none of the above, but that wasn’t an option.
I think that’s right. It was an already oldish school building trying to deal with the first major wave of the Baby Boom hitting the schools in the 1950’s. There wasn’t enough room for us, and every available space was in use as a classroom – I had one class in an L-shaped room which I think may have been meant to be a teachers’ lounge; the teacher sat at the joint of the L and could look down either side and watch all of us, but not at the same time; kids in one side of the L couldn’t see, or very well hear, the kids in the other. In any case, if there was an auditorium, it would have been in use as a classroom, or more likely as more than one classroom with makeshift dividers. We did have a cafeteria.
A computer lab would have been an utterly astonishing thing to find in a 1950’s or 1960’s grade or high school. If there was any such thing in my late 60’s-early 70’s university, I never saw it; though I wasn’t taking any of the courses it might have been thought applicable to at the time. And I don’t suppose it would have been anything like a modern one.
Air conditioning in New York State, Maine, and Massachusetts schools would have been a startling luxury. But then, I don’t recall more than a very occasional day when we would have wanted it.
– it occurs to me that I think one of the high schools did have a tennis court. I forgot to put that in, I’d forgotten about it. And one of them may have had an elevator somewhere, but the students weren’t allowed to use it if so; I can’t remember for sure if there was one. I just went back and added the tennis court.
My high school has TWO dedicated auditoriums, one built back in 1928. It also has both a lap pool and a diving/water polo pool. It’s SoCal - pools are MANDATORY. Except for the school I teach at. No pool. But since we are all of a good 3 wood away from the local JC, which has 3 pools, we really aren’t suffering much.
We did have a rifle range for some reason, though. Most students didn’t even know about it, it was in the basement of a building that was almost entirely used by the Math & Science Magnet program. I’m not entirely sure why it was there, but that was the oldest building in the school’s complex (there were 5 separate buildings, and a gym, of various ages connected by hallways and breezeways). It opened in the 1930s at that location.
My HS didn’t have a pool, but we were a mile or two away from a University. I dated a guy who had been on the swim team, I’m guessing that’s where they practiced.
We had some classrooms in small buildings separate from the main building. Some of those were basically adapted double wides, and they had window units. I think parts of the main building were air conditioned. At least the offices were.
We had an auditorium in all the schools I went to. My HS also had a theatre maybe a quarter size of the auditorium
No air conditioning in elementary school or middle school. The high school had one building that was built the same time as the others and one building built later with no windows that could be opened. That had air conditioning .
My HS was the only school in the city that had A/C (out of about 10). It was not traditional A/C, though: we had a big well under the parking lot into which went the water used to cool the place, which was pumped back through in the colder months to augment the heating. When they mothballed the school after enrollment dropped too much, it only lasted a few years before the dreaded black mold ate it up (it was a very tight building).
We did not have a “computer lab”, but the math teacher who taught computer science did have an ASR TTY (with card reader and paper tape drive) and a Burroughs E4000 in the classroom. The actual computer was over on 102nd St, in a school district building.
Al of my schools had air conditioning because you can’t put 30 kids in a room without it in August in New Mexico. It was evaporative cooling, though, and not distributed well by the ductwork, so it’s not like we were basking in refrigerated air. Only my high school had a dedicated auditorium; any gatherings in elementary or junior high were held in the gym or the cafeteria.
It’s a funny thing - there were no computer labs in any of the schools because there were no personal computers yet.
There wasn’t a computer lab at the high school I attended because at that time, state-of-the-art was a TI-10 calculator or a mainframe. My first Tech. class was learning how to use IBM cards. We programmed in Basic and liked it!
My middle school had a windowless room which was between 4 other rooms, which had 4 Trash 80s. Elementary school didn’t have any computers when I was there.
My elementary school had an auditorium with a stage at one end, which was used as a lunch room, then a folding wall and then the gym. The folding wall would be folded back for the school fair, but stayed in place for school-wide assemblies.
There was only one pool for the entire school district and it just got torn down a few years ago. I think the students have to go to the Y, which wasn’t there when I was growing up, for swim class.
I actually don’t remember where we held assemblies in middle school. Probably was the gym, which I hated, which is probably why I’ve blocked it out.
My highschool had a dedicated auditorium for plays and certain class events. I remember someone coming to our school and demonstrating MIDI around 1984/5.
Regarding dental braces, I had the old-school cemented to my teeth kind in high school. In my 30s/40s, my teeth had moved enough that I needed braces again and used the fancy “invisible” kind. After that I got a perment wire retainer behind my lower front teeth. FYI, it’s possible to get a head MRI with a wire retainer bonded to your teeth. At least I survived without incident.
I’m not sure what’s meant by “cemented to your teeth” braces. I had the ones that were metal bands pounded in place with a rubber mallet. Installation was awful. I don’t think they were cemented. I got my braces in probably 1970.
When I had braces (1978-80), only the braces around my molars were the metal bands/rings; the individual braces on each of my incisors and canines were little square metal brackets which were cemented to the front of each tooth.
(And, for that matter, the bands around the molars were cemented in place, too.)
My admittedly-hazy memory is that the style I had (glued only to the front of the teeth) was a fairly new type at that time, and that my orthodontist was enamored with them.
I only had a retainer, so I couldn’t answer the poll.
My schools only had a separate “auditorium.” My elementary school – Catholic – used the Parish Hall for anything more than one classroom of kids. That’s where we were when we heard JFK had been shot.
My high school has the Robert Frost Auditorium. Very “space age.” It’s been used in a bunch of movies.
and here’s an overhead shot I’ve never seen before. Cool!
ETA: My parents picked their home based on its proximity to schools, so I always walked.
