Arnco-Sargent Elementary School is an institution with long standing history and tradition. Many of our students’ parents and grandparents attended our school during their educational career. We are proud of our heritage and of the progress and growth that we have had over the many years. In order for you to understand our current students better, we wanted to include some background information about our school, its previous students, and areas of study.
Sargent School was located on Old Carrollton Highway. Its original date of opening is unknown, but it is often thought to be around 1918. Until 1918, students only went to school five months of the year – January, February, March, July and August. The other months were used for planting and harvesting crops. Sargent School was originally a one-room schoolhouse with log benches. Students studied reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1918, Sargent School and Farmers’ High School consolidated to form a new Sargent school. There were 113 male students and 127 female students in this new school. Students studied spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history and health.
Arnco School was started in 1929 in a two-room house. This school contained 80 students in four grades and had two teachers. In 1930, the school was moved to a new building located next to the Arnco Baptist Church. The Arnco Baptist Church Fellowship Hall now stands where Arnco School used to be. Arnco was a mill town and as the town grew so did the school. The school soon had 175 students in five rooms and a basement. Reading, writing and arithmetic were the basic subjects. Music and Art were also taught. Classrooms were warmed by a potbellied stove that burned coal. There was no lunchroom, but there were indoor restrooms with running water. They had a basketball and a baseball team with the cloth for the uniforms furnished by the Arnco Mill.
In the mid-1950’s Arnco School consolidated with Sargent School forming Arnco-Sargent Elementary School. By 1984, Arnco-Sargent had eleven rooms and nine classes: one kindergarten, one third grade, two fourth and fifth grades, one sixth grade, and two seventh grades. There were 218 students, eleven teachers, one part-time speech instructor, one band director, one music director, one gifted teacher and a librarian. Arnco-Sargent Elementary has since gone through several renovations to accommodate the area’s growth. In January 1988, a new library was constructed. In 1994, eleven new classrooms were added. In 2001, three additional classrooms were built. In the summer of 2009, our school went through complete renovations.
