ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Fernando Medrano was in the last class to graduate from Eastern Junior High School in 1992 before becoming Marshall Middle School the next year. Here he is looking at a yearbook from 1992.
How incredible is it that hundreds of Lynn students along with their teachers and other school workers are going to move to a brand-new school in less than a month?
To put it in perspective, the new Marshall Middle School’s opening is an accomplishment the city of Lynn has not seen in 20 years when Classical High School moved to O’Callaghan Way. To be fair, the Knowledge Is Power Program has sat atop the Highlands in a new building for several years, but a new public school open to all students who sign up and enroll is a reason to celebrate.
And celebrate they did on Wednesday at the existing Marshall on Porter Street, where a cake was cut, laughter rang through the aging building and older school employees swapped stories about the old Eastern Junior High School.
Marshall was built in 1923. Pickering Middle School was built in 1917. Anyone interested in seeing what a school looked like in 1897 is welcome to drive over to Aborn on Eastern Avenue. Brickett School was built in 1911 — around the time the Titanic was constructed.
Five other local schools are nudging the century mark and one — Tracy in West Lynn — has educated local students for a duration straddling three centuries.
There are those who say it is the people — not the classrooms, schoolyards, gymnasiums or chalk boards — that make or a break a good education. They are right and Marshall, Pickering, Brickett and Tracy prove on a daily basis that good educations can take place in aging — in Marshall and Pickering’s case — deteriorating buildings.
But more than just a good education is going to take place on Brookline Street starting later this month when the new Marshall opens. Students and teachers alike are going to thrill to the sight of clean hallways, state-of-the-art equipment and sunlight pouring through new windows.
Spring is going to truly spring in Marshall because minds, young and old, reinvigorated by a short vacation and a move to new surroundings, will reset their grasp on knowledge and recommit to the task of turning students into travelers on the lifetime road of knowledge and curiosity.
New schools have the power to inspire, motivate and, even more important, hold a mirror up to a city’s education system and allow those in charge to say, “here is the reason why we have to keep doing better.”
Thankfully, in Lynn’s case, the opportunity to repeat a farewell celebration in Pickering similar to the one hosted this week in Marshall is only a few short years away.