In keeping with this summer?s theme of all things Kennedale ending in 7, the Kennedale News has looked back to 1957. That was the year for the first graduation class of Kennedale High School. {{more: Continue … }}
Kennedale schools date back over a century ?
Kennedale?s school history dates back to the 1890 when the school was in a two-story frame building that would have been located just south of the present Kennedale ISD Adminstration Building on Kennedale Parkway. There is a historical marker at the location.The school one large classroom on the bottom floor and an auditorium on the top floor. Back then school terms were short often tied around the planting and harvesting season. Kennedale?s school term lasted two months with one teacher teaching all the students.became a formal school district in 1913 …
The Kennedale community formalized the Kennedale school system in 1913 by voting in a free school district with elected trustees. By that time, the school had a principal and three teachers. The school year lasted 6 months and was held in a larger two story brick building that replaced the old wood frame school house.
Over the years, grade classes were added so that the students could get at least an elementary education. Then classes were added above the elementary to the point that students could attend school in Kennedale up to the 10th grade.to graduate students had to go to Mansfield or Fort Worth …
The exact times that the Kennedale School District added each grade is not available, but it is known that students who wanted to graduate from high school had to attend Fort Worth Polytechnic High School or Mansfield High. What is known is that the Kennedale school system started adding the last remaining two grades, 11th and 12th, in 1956-57.
Students in the Class of 1957 had to attend school in Fort Worth or Mansfield in their junior year as there were no junior senior classes being taught. But, a year later, they were able to transfer back to Kennedale, complete their senior year and become part of the first graduating class of Kennedale High School.8 members in first graduating class …
It is not known if all the students elected to return to Kennedale that year but Tammy Jones of the Kennedale News with the assistance of Wilda Turner (KHS Class of 1958) publish in 2008 the school photos and names of the 8 member Kennedale class of 1957. It included Billy Clappers, Jerry Cooper, Kenneth Daughtery, Arnold Hennesay, William Kirkpartrick, Jo Anne Ledbetter, Patsy Pearce and Bobby Townsend.
The first true Kennedale High School graduating class was the following year when students who were able to take all their classes on campus without transferring. Like the year before they were awarded their diplomas in the old high school gym (now called the Cheer Gym) between the KISD Administration Complex and Delaney Elementary School.
That year the class included 19 students ? nine males and ten females. The class was composed of Wilda Albright, Ellen Allcorn, Royce Brewer, Dorothy Burch, Janell Cappers, Joe Colin, Pauline Fenoglio, Susan Hughes, Ruth Kline, Phillip Miller, Gaye Preston, Charles Randall, Donald Randall, Jamie Roberts, Arlie Stanley, James Townsend, Kenneth Trammel, Obbie Winsett and Lucy Wyatt.The commencement speaker that year was Professor Wyatt from TCU who was an uncle to KHS senior graduate Lucy Wyatt.Kennedale High School has moved several times from its original site on Business 287 (Kennedale Parkway) to the site on Corry Edwards Drive that is now Kennedale Junior High and finally to the the present location at 901 Wildcat Drive in 1999.Interested in community history check out the KennedaleHistorical Society Facebook
