Timeline of schools in McCollom Bldg.

1848  - Town votes to build a new Center School for students up to sixth grade, with a second story for a private “academy of higher learning,” which becomes Appleton Academy. This was on the site of the current fire station. Then as now, higher grades went out of town.

1853  - Appleton Academy trustees build what is now the McCollom Building, for day students and boarding students.

1871 - Name is changed to McCollom Academy (later Institute) when Mont Vernon resident George McCollom donates $10,000. Attendance peaks at 86 in 1874, but slowly declines as “country academies” fall out of favor. McCollom Institute closes around 1900.

1901-1906  - Building operated as a public high school for Mont Vernon. Attendance never tops 20 and the cost proves too great.

1906 - Arthur Stearns, headmaster of Lakewood (N.J.) School for boys, agrees to establish a boarding school for both sexes in Mont Vernon. Stearns School opens in September. It stops accepting girls in 1910.

1906-1937  - Stearns School flourishes as a boarding prep school, eventually owning several town buildings, the golf course (now the site of the Post Office), and Stearns Pond, used for ice hockey. Attendance peaks at 47 pupils, but declines after the stock market crash of 1929. The school closes in 1937, and the building stands largely unused for a decade.

1947 - McCollom Building trustees allow the town to use the building for elementary school overflow from Central School. It has two ground-floor classrooms –grades 1-3, grades 4-6 – and a gym upstairs. A third classroom is built in 1955, and the upstairs is turned into classrooms in 1961.

1970 - Village School opens on Harwood Road, and grades 4-6 move there.

1990 - All classes moved to the Village School. The McCollom Building ends 137 years as a school and is given to the town for offices.

Compiled 2017 by Dave Brooks