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"South Deerfield- The Mount Sugar Loaf School"

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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After a year of planning, the grammar school in South Deerfield was ready for construction, as detailed in this article from February, 1913. The school would be completed by December of that year, ready for the students to move into. Like the schools themselves, this new building reflected the changing character of schooling and the community in the early part of the 20th century. South Deerfield's growing population, its numbers swelled by the growth of agriculture and industry in the town, was filling its schools with new students. The school system itself was changing too, offering a more specialized education. One of the major developments in schools in this period was a major move away from the "single-room" system, where all children were taught in the same room, to one with separate rooms for each grade. This usually meant the consolidation of local elementary schools into larger, more centralized facilities such as this.

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