August 12, 1965
Old Fire Hall Given to School
Kent councillors haven’t had any luck trying to sell the old fire hall, so they’re going to give it away.
The first time they advertised the building for sale there were no bidders. Monday night they had a bid from Gray Construction for $40. They also had a request from the school board that the building be donated for use as a maintenance workshop.
New vocational courses will require the part of the industrial arts building that is now used for a maintenance shop, and a replacement would cost several thousand dollars. Councillors decided they would save the taxpayers far more money by donating the old building than they would make by selling it, and the school request was granted.
Thirty-two Graduates from Agassiz School
A record graduating class of 32 young men and women will be honoured at Agassiz Secondary School this fall. Out of a total of 38 students, 21 took the university entrance program and 17 the general or vocational program. Seventeen of those on university program completed the required three majors and 120 credits, either through recommendation or successfully writing government exams. On the general program 14 students were successful.
In university program subjects, between 40 and 60 per cent of students were recommended so that only about the lower half of each class wrote the examinations. A total of 102 papers were written, some of them by Grade 11 students and 89 or 87.2 per cent were passed.
Three students wrote for government scholarships. Jim Funk and Cornelius Van Laerhoven each obtained first-class honours with identical averages of 81.75 per cent. They will have half of their university fees paid by the government. Pauline Russell obtained second-class standing and will have one-third of her fees paid.
The class includes the first native student ever to graduate from Agassiz school on the university program, Maynard Paul from Chehalis.
It was the biggest Grade 12 class in the school’s history and by far the greatest number to graduate. Last year there were 18 graduated from a class of 32. The Grade 11 class this year, which will be Grade 12 in the coming term, had more than 40 pupils but not all may return to school.
This year’s result is a tremendous change from only half a dozen yeas ago when graduating classes might be a dozen or less and very few actually passed their exams. The change appears to date from the time when graduation exercises were changed from the spring – before exams were written – until the fall.