Avon Park’s first brick school was paid for by a $25,000 bond issue in 1913

DeSoto County’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jas. O. Bickley, reported to Tallahassee in 1914 that Avon Park was building a school in brick and said where the money came from:

“Avon Park Special Tax School District No. 3 voted bonds to the amount of $25,000; $20,000 of which is to be used for erecting and equipping a Junior High School at Avon Park, the building to be completed for this term of school; the remaining $5,000 is to be used for constructing rural schools in the District.”[dpi-1912-1914]

In the same report, under Junior High Schools:

“Next year we will have Junior High Schools at Nocatee and Avon Park, where we now have modern brick buildings under construction.”[dpi-1912-1914]

Why this matters

This is the earliest firm date, cost and financing for any school building at Avon Park. Before it, the town’s schooling was known only from fragments: a school with 28 to 32 pupils in August 1905, a school library of sixty volumes in November 1905, and a schoolhouse that burned in 1895.

It also identifies the building behind an existing fact. An “Avon Park High School” was the district polling place by February 1915, and a $25,000 bond-financed brick building “to be completed for this term of school” fits a completion in the second half of 1914 or very early 1915. The polling place and the bonded building are almost certainly the same structure.

The district’s number is worth noting on its own account. Avon Park Special Tax School District No. 3 was one of forty such districts in DeSoto County, each levying three mills, and it is the local taxing body that actually built and ran the town’s school. Avon Park’s schooling was financed by Avon Park’s own property owners, not by the county at large.

What happened to the building

It was outgrown within five years. By 1920 the county superintendent was reporting:

“Avon Park, on account of the rapid increase of the school population, was forced to erect a four-room frame building at a cost of $4,000. This was temporary, as a modern high school building will be erected as soon as conditions become normal.”[dpi-1918-1920]

The November 1920 Sanborn fire insurance sheets show an “Avon Park High School” and an “Avon Park Graded School” standing together on Block 43A between South Lake and South Verona avenues — the 1914–1915 brick building facing Lake Avenue and its 1918 frame stopgap at the northeast corner on Verona Avenue.[sanborn-1920] (The town’s earlier 1893–1914 wooden school had stood on South Forest Avenue at Walnut Street, and was later destroyed in the 1926 hurricane.)

The promised “modern high school building” is the large high school complex the National Register nomination dates only loosely to between 1920 and 1926. A second and larger bond issue paid for it: the state’s table of outstanding school-district debt records $42,000 of Improvement Bonds and $10,000 of Refunding Bonds, both dated 1 May 1925 and both at six per cent, still outstanding in the mid-1930s.[dpi-1934-1936]

What the same records show about race

The bond that built Avon Park’s brick school was a white school’s bond. DeSoto County had forty special tax school districts in 1914-1916, and the county superintendent counted the schools inside them: “Schools for whites in these districts, 78; schools for whites not in these districts, 1; schools for negroes in these districts 4.”[dpi-1914-1916] The special-tax district was the mechanism that paid for a longer term, a better-paid teacher and a brick building, and it was almost entirely closed to the county’s Black schools. Avon Park’s first public school for Black children did not open until 1926, thirteen years after this bond was voted.

References

• dpi-1912-1914 — Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction. Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1912-1914: DeSoto County report of Jas. O. Bickley. 31 December 1914. florida-superintendent-biennial-reports.md
• dpi-1914-1916 — Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1914-1916: DeSoto County report. 31 December 1916. florida-superintendent-biennial-reports.md
• dpi-1918-1920 — Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1918-1920: DeSoto County report. 31 December 1920. florida-superintendent-biennial-reports.md
• dpi-1934-1936 — Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1934-1936: outstanding school bonded debt. 31 December 1936. florida-superintendent-biennial-reports.md
• sanborn-1920 — Sanborn Map Company, via Library of Congress. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Avon Park, DeSoto County, Florida, November 1920, Sheet 1. 1 November 1920. sanborn-1920-avon-park.md

Related

• Report: the schools of Avon Park
• Finding: Cross-Walk of the 1920 Sanborn School Campus on Block 43A to Modern Avon Park Middle School
• Reference: the biennial reports of Florida’s Superintendent of Public Instruction
• Finding: the Avon Park school house burned in 1895
• Entity: Hopewell School, Avon Park

Where this comes from

Evidence

single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.

Review

unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.

Rights

society

Sources

1. Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1912-1914: DeSoto County report of Jas. O. Bickley (1914)
2. Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1914-1916: DeSoto County report (1916)
3. Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1918-1920: DeSoto County report (1920)
4. Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Florida, 1934-1936: outstanding school bonded debt (1936)
5. Sanborn Map Company, via Library of Congress, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Avon Park, DeSoto County, Florida, November 1920, Sheet 1 (references/sanborn-1920-avon-park.md) (1920)

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