West Side vs. East Side: A History of St. Charles Public Schools, Part 1

The other day I pulled out my calendar/planner to jot down an appointment and realized, with much shock, that we are almost halfway through August! How did this happen? Where did June and July go? Were they somehow overlooked this year? No, I realized when I paused to think about it I have really been just that busy.

The reason I was grabbing my planner was to find a time when I could get over to the D303 Administrative Offices to set up a pictorial history display before the start of school. Wow, summer is almost over if the start of school is looming. I guess the massive “Back to School” displays and signs at should have been my first clue that August was well under way but, not needing to spend anytime in those aisles, I apparently didn’t pay any attention.

Since it is “Back to School” time and all, I figured now would be as good a time as any to write a little bit about the history of the schools in St. Charles. In previous posts, I have told the story of two St. Charles “firsts”: and . Today, I am sharing the story of another first—the first public school in the state of Illinois.

Before there were public schools in Illinois, many students attended subscription schools. The name pretty much says it all; students had to pay a subscription fee to be allowed to attend class. Fees would be collected daily, monthly or quarterly, depending on the school. St. Charles had several early schools such as these, including one run by early settlers Prudence and Dean Ferson.

In 1853, Illinois passed a public education bill providing for tax-supported free public education. St. Charles did not waste any time capitalizing on this new policy. In 1854, at a cost of $6,000, St. Charles built the first public school in the state. The school, which was styled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia, was built on the west side of town and called the West Side School.

As I tell the third grade students that come to the History Museum on field trips, everyone in town was very happy and excited for the new school and things were great … for two years. And then trouble started. It seems the folks that lived over on the east side of town started to complain. It wasn’t very fair that the school was on the west side of town, and it wasn’t very fair that their students had to walk all the way across the bridge and up a hill to get to class. And it just wasn’t fair that they didn’t have a school on their side of town.

Now, if my dad had been around at that time, I am almost certain his response to these complaints would have been something along the lines of “Life’s not fair; that’s where you take the kids to see the cows and the pigs," a phrase often heard growing up in our house when my sister or I complained about the perceived unfairness of a situation. However, St. Charles’ response was to build another public school. In 1856, at a cost of $15,000, St. Charles built the East Side School.

With the East and West Side Schools established, a natural rivalry began to grow. After some time, the rivalry took an ugly turn and the open hostility between the two sides threatened to split St. Charles into two separate towns. The East Side School kids felt they were better then the Wet Side School kids while the West Side felt they were the superior group. According to stories, the Main Street Bridge was their battleground and soon became unsafe after school let out because of the fighting students. Something needed to be done to put an end to this constant fighting but no one could find a solution.

Finally, in 1897, then Mayor Charles Haines came up with a plan to end the battle between the schools. Haines proposed that a new school be built to house all of the older students. The younger ones would still attend either the East or West Side Schools but from sixth grade on all of the students would attend a combined junior and senior high school. The plan had promise but St. Charles was lacking in funds and land for a new school. So, once again, it was Charles Haines to the rescue; he donated his family’s old homestead and the $30,000 needed to build the school.

The new Charles Haines School (also known as the St. Charles High School and later the Haines Junior High) was built in 1898 at the corner of Main Street and East 7th Street (now 7th Avenue). Many in town protested that the school was too far away from those on the west side, others complained that it was too large and would never be fully utilized, and of course people disliked the high cost of building the new school. In the end, however, the new building solved the problem of the fighting students and brought all of St. Charles together again.

Stay tuned for the second part of this tale to learn what happened to the original Haines School and to learn about where some of the schools we have today got their names.