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Blast From The Past

Cassadaga School Board Opens Time Capsule From 1939

Superintendent Chuck Leichner, pictured, opened a time capsule from 1939 Monday during a meeting of the Cassadaga Valley Central School Board. The capsule was unearthed due to renovations taking place at the school. P-J photos by Jordan W. Patterson

History was cracked open Monday night at Cassadaga Valley Central School.

A time capsule buried in 1939 was opened at the tail end of a regular meeting of the school board. The slightly damaged capsule was dug up because of renovations that are being made to the school building. Some of the capsule’s contents were unreadable and didn’t make the long awaited meeting.

The school board figured it was time to see what was inside because they were renovating the school and will most likely bury another time capsule for the school to dig up in another 78 years.

“So, we had the contractors here that would be able to extract (the time capsule), so, that’s really why we did it,” Leichner said.

The contents included an ad to vote for a proposition in the 1930s, which Superintendent Chuck Leichner pointed out that the school isn’t allowed to tell the public or the board how to vote on propositions. The majority of the contents were papers on which most of the writing was smudged from water damage and mold. A big section of the time capsule was filled with papers that were presumably old blue prints for the construction that was added to the school during that time.

Members of the school board said they will do their best to maintain the documents and decipher what was left for the future to find.

While the time capsule was the main attraction of the board meeting there were still other business that was to be discussed, including an audit report for the 2017 school year; a recap from teachers who attended Model Schools; and a data report of the 3-8 ELA and Math scores.

The auditors were in agreement that Cassadaga had a “good year” last year in terms of income and spending. The teachers that attended the Model Schools conference explained that the conference was a success and made all notes taken at the conference available to the board.

Cassadaga students also attended the meeting and urgered the school to change a procedure put in place that required students to refrain from wearing backpacks inside the school during school hours. The purpose of the backpack regulation is to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff. The students against the regulation argued that it does not enhance safety and that there are no clear connection to limited backpack use. The counter argument against the procedure was that it was making it more difficult to be on time to class because students can’t carry their books in their backpacks.

Leichner argued that the four-minute period in between classes is a sufficient amount of time for students to stop at their lockers between each class.

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