In 1964, the Mechanicsburg Area School District was created by merging three existing school districts: the Mechanicsburg School District, the Upper Allen School District and the Shiremanstown School District. The school district is fortunate to have in its archives a collection of documents from the former Shiremanstown School District.
Prior to incorporation in 1874, Shiremanstown was a post village located along the Simpson Ferry Road, the main road leading from Carlisle to New Cumberland. It was located partly in Hampton Township and partly in Lower Allen Township. The students from the area received their education as part of either the Hampton Township School District or the Lower Allen Township School District. According to an article in History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, the students of Shiremanstown were educated in a “large, commodious brick school house built in 1868 by Lower Allen Township.”
After Shiremanstown became a legal entity in August 1874, the decision was made by the town leaders to organize the Shiremanstown Borough School District. An election was held to form a school board and the first meeting of the newly formed school board was held February 20, 1875. The new school board began the process of negotiating the split from Hampton Township and Lower Allen Township. The split with Hampton Township was very amicable with Hampton Township agreeing to allow Shiremanstown to retain the existing building as well as their share of the state subsidy.
The split with Lower Allen Township did not go as smoothly and eventually led to a court battle that ended with a series of rulings including a judgment by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The original lower court decision favored Lower Allen Township. It forced Shiremanstown, in addition to lawyer fees and court costs, to pay a subsidy of $585.52 to the Lower Allen School Board. In order to make this payment, the Shiremanstown Board needed to borrow $250, a large sum since the annual budget for the district was only about $1,000 a year. The final ruling of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued in 1879 ruled that Lower Allen did not need to reimburse Shiremanstown the $72.50 that the Shiremanstown School Board felt was illegally withheld as their part of the state subsidy.
Just like today, two major items of business at most meetings were the raising of money and the payment of bills. In order to raise money, once a year the members of the school board set the millage rate, which ranged from 2 to 3 percent and often included an additional ½ - 1 percent for building maintenance. This was usually leveed at the summer meeting. An additional tax on dogs was added in 1891.The largest single expense of the district, other than the salaries for teachers, was the cost of fuel to heat the school house. Very early in the process, a “committee on coal” was set up to investigate the cheapest option for purchasing the commodity and heating the school rooms.
Most of the school board members were very regular in their attendance and served without incidents, but one member was removed from his office for missing four meetings. Another member of the school board resigned over a dispute concerning the salary of the primary teacher set by the board at $30 per month. The members of the board took their role so seriously that when the local newspaper was set to publish an article about the board, members visited the editor of the paper demanding to know the author of the article. Nothing further is mentioned in the minutes about this incident likely indicating that the article was not as bad as the board members feared.
The advancement of civilization demands a full development of the minds of our girls. The day when the boy is to be educated and the girl neglected has, like other relics of barbarism, passed into history.