In 1970, I started the sixth grade and should have moved to the junior high school. That year Carman Schools ran out of money. Also that year Carman saw its highest enrollment ever with almost 10,000 students. For some reason that seemed to be a common occurrence back in the 60’s and early 70’s. 

They made many ‘adjustments’ to balance the budget. Number one was of course cutting fine arts. Next was the elimination of food services, buses, librarians and custodian workers. After that they closed all the junior high schools, moving the sixth grade back into the elementary school. Seventh and eighth grades attended the high school. That move resulted in the high school having shorter classes and split sessions. The last move was to layoff teachers and increase class sizes.

So instead of reporting to Utley Junior High, I was still a student at Woodland Elementary. I honestly remember nothing that year about education, rather the chaos that resulted is imprinted in my mind.

I ended up being in homeroom with all the cool kids, the only time I ever found myself in that situation. Our homeroom teacher was the gym teacher who refused to walk a quarter of the way through the school to ever check on us. Each morning, lunch and end of day, a group of eleven-year-olds reigned supreme. No adult in sight, we did whatever we wanted.

 We drank Coke by the case, ate chocolate, chewed bubble gum and listened to Rock N Roll. 

During that time, I would visit the Woolworth at Genesee Valley Mall each week and buy the latest 45 rpm records. That year I was popular because I had the music! The Osmonds, The Jackson Five, The Carpenters, Bobby Sherman all made the girls look my way, because I had the music!

A friend of mine Ronnie and myself one day snuck into the closed library and claimed a record player as ours. It wasn’t high fidelity, but I spun the grooves all that year, rockin the classroom. 

A couple of the other kids lived by a neighborhood grocery store and each night would buy out their supply of green apple bubble gum. Bought for a dime a string, they would sell it like drugs on the playground to the ‘underclassmen’ for a quarter a string. This money kept us in pop and candy.

There were no janitors and we were expected to clean our own homerooms. Since this room was only used for our thrice a day parties, it never got cleaned. Trash built up and overflowed the bins, the floors were dirty and dull. We often would shake up an unopened cola and holding it out the windows, open it. After a few weeks of this, the windows were useless and Carmel colored.

Over the summer, the millage passed and the district returned somewhat to normal. I was no longer part of the in crowd and as we entered Utley I took my normal place there with the wall flowers. 

Roy Richard
Sept 2023