Dresden School District
The Dresden School District is the first interstate school district in the United States. It operates the Francis C. Richmond Middle School and Hanover High School in Hanover, New Hampshire. The district is part of the New Hampshire's School Administrative Unit (SAU) 70,[1] which also includes two other school districts, each with its own school board: the Hanover School District, which operates the Bernice A. Ray Elementary School in Hanover, and the Norwich School District, which operates the Marion Cross Elementary School in Norwich, Vermont.
History
Norwich, Vermont, and Hanover, New Hampshire, lie on opposite sides of the Connecticut River. Many Norwich residents were employed at Dartmouth College and the Mary Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover. Before 1964, Hanover had provided secondary education to Norwich students on a tuition basis, paid by the Norwich school district, which had no local high school. Growth in enrollment in Hanover High School necessitated new construction, which would have been easier to finance with contributions from Norwich. Norwich was unable by state law to contribute to Hanover's construction cost, and Hanover was unable by state law to give Norwich any voice in the operation of the schools.[2][3][4]
Several Dartmouth College faculty members on the Hanover and Norwich school boards (
The name Dresden was taken from the name of the corner of Hanover in which Dartmouth College was located in the 1770s. Between 1776 and 1784, citizens of Dresden sought to secede from the state of New Hampshire, either by joining with Norwich and other nearby towns in a new state called
See also
- Rivendell Interstate School District, serving Orford, NH, Vershire, VT, West Fairlee, VT, and Fairlee, VT
- Union County–College Corner Joint School District, an earlier joint district formed in Indiana and Ohio without congressional approval
References
- ^ School Administrative Unit (SAU) 70
- ^ Allen R. Foley, "Dresden School District", Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, January 1964.
- ^ Dresden School District v. Hanover School District, Supreme Court of New Hampshire, Grafton County, March 18, 1964
- ^ Dresden v. Norwich, Supreme Court of Vermont, September 14, 1964
- ^ Obituary of Donald L. Kreider, LancasterOnline, Lancaster County News, December 14, 2006
- ^ Blinkhorn: Kennedy and Dresden, Vermont Public Radio, November 15, 2013
- ^ Jere Daniell, "The American Republic: 1760-1870, The Western Rebellion" Archived November 22, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, New Hampshire Profile (Special Issue, 1976)