Longfellow Elementary
303 Maxwell Ave.
Royal Oak, Michigan 48067
Phone: 248.541.7938 Fax: 248.541.4724
Principal: Judith Juneau
Where are we headed?
The students from Longfellow Elementary will attend Addams Elementary in the fall of 2007. The new Principal of Addams Elementary will be Judith Juneau, who is currently the Principal of Longfellow Elementary.
For more information about POD teaching, click here.
Closing Activities
May 23rd: Open House at Longfellow. Come and visit the building before it closes in June. 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Java with Judi: Judi Juneau has already had several informal meetings with parents and community members to provide an opportunity to meet Judi and discuss consolidation questions and concerns. Check with Judi Juneau at Longfellow for future dates.
A Teacher Exchange Day is being planned between the Starr and Longfellow staffs.
The Longfellow student body will be attending an acrobat performance as a closing activity.
History
The Longfellow building was completed in 1920 at a cost of $141,000. It was planned to accommodate 460 children. There were nine regular sized rooms, two small recitation rooms, one nurse's clinic, one teacher's rest room, four toilets, one-gymnasium, one small kindergarten room and rooms for the heating plant. These rooms were large enough to accommodate 24 students, but in 1927, they had to hold 32 to 36 students in each of the rooms. The kindergarten room was deemed totally unsuited for its purpose and Longfellow was the only school in the district without an auditorium. In addition to the main building, it was necessary to use a three-room temporary school. This option also proved to be over crowded, poorly vented and heated.
A bond proposal added 12 regular sized classrooms, a library, new kindergarten room, a small auditorium, additional toilets and enlarged the boiler. The figure to do all of the before was approximately $170,000.
Fortunately, the bond passed and the additions were made to the building, barely keeping up with the growing enrollment. By 1929, the student population was 554 students, although the estimation of how many could actually fit into Longfellow was 1050! Longfellow had the largest capacity of all the schools in the district next to the Senior High which could hold up to 1,800 students.
Longfellow was again updated in 1970 and lost the auditorium to a new gym, the old gym became the media center, the library became two classrooms the main office was reconfigured and several new classrooms were created. Since the new movement in education was the "open" classroom, many of the rooms were not entirely walled-in, something that was rectified in the early 90's.
The last bond issue passed in Royal Oak called for the closing Longfellow.
