Woods Elementary School

**Woods Elementary School** is a K-5 public elementary school located at 9400 S Wiegand Street in southeast Linelin City.

## Geography

Woods Elementary School is located on a 6.83 acre campus set in the suburban neighborhood of Bryant-Southwoods. The school campus can be accessed directly by car on both Wiegand Street to the east and by Ruge Lane. To the north is Fairway Street which is separated from the campus by a thin line of woods. To the west of the school's campus are homes, which front onto Meadow Street. The east of side of the campus includes the main school building, two portables, and a small parking area to the north side of the school, accessible via Wiegand. There is also a smaller lot to the south of the school, off of Ruge Lane. Ruge Lane is a short street which becomes a dirt pathway blocked from cars via a chainlink fence, this path then encircles the school's field. The school has a small grass field and dirt path that goes around it. In the field is a rudimentary baseball diamond, wooden dugout shelters, and bleachers.

## History

Prior to the 1940s, the area of Bryant-Southwoods was underdeveloped, with only a few homes dotting the mostly forested area. At the intersection of Wiegand St and Valk Avenue was a community called "Bryant", annexed into Linelin City in the 1920s.

### Bryant

Bryant was originally well outside the lumber town of Linelin City. Bryant was settled by Frederik Bryant, a German and English settler originally from Virginia. With him came a small community of mainly German homesteaders, the names of many remain in the street names of the area. A post office in Bryant opened in 1882, and closed in 1919. At the crossroads of Wiegand and Valk was the former post office, a few businesses, the Bryant homestead, and an extant electric railroad station, built in 1921. Between Valk and Horner Avenues, north of the current Woods Elementary, was a two-room schoolhouse called the Bryant School, built ca. 1890. The schoolhouse served the students of the area up until 1945. The two-room schoolhouse was converted into a private home afterwards.

### Southwoods

In 1941 a large steel plant was constructed on empty land nearby Bryant, now part of the city of Linelin. The steel plant was part of Linelin City Works (LCW), a short-lived emergency steel plant that was disbanded after the war. To provide housing to the many workers migrating to Bryant to work in the plant, a wartime housing project known as "Bryant Woods" or "Southwoods" was constructed. 50 acres were purchased of mostly empty, marshy land near the plant. The land was developed between 1941 and 1943 and officially called the "Bryant Woods City". A part of the project was to build a temporary wooden schoolhouse to supplement the influx of students into the two-room Bryant School. Students would then go on to attend high school in the city's already established high schools.

After the end of the war in 1945 the steel plant was completely shut down. The land the large plant once sat on is now a freeway and office park development. The housing project remained a while longer, with the last homes removed in 1950. Though some residents left back to their hometowns, many chose to stay in the Bryant area. Some bought back their temporary homes and had them moved onto empty land in the Bryant area, and later built their own homes. Others immediately built or purchased homes in the Bryant area. Today, few original Southwoods homes remain - as they were designed to be temporary, with poor heating and sometimes no electricity.

### Construction of the School

In 1945 Linelin City School District (LCSD) passed a bond measure to build and reconstruct the school infrastructure across the city. This included tearing down or selling off all of the early wooden school buildings, including the Bryant and Southwoods Schools. Money was provided for the construction of a Bryant Woods Elementary School, to serve grades K-5. The school bought up 6.8 acres south of the old Bryant School and cleared it by 1945. The original school was completed by 1947, named Bryant Woods Elementary School. The school initially had many portables to serve the mostly still present population of the original Southwoods projects, yet removed them as the school population lessened.

The original school consisted of two buildings. There was a long, rectangular building that fronted Wiegand Street which held four classrooms. To its west was a play shed (or small gym), connected to the main building via a covered walkway. The school was also built with a small administrative office. The first principal was Don Hutchinson Jr. In 1950, after the removal of all but two portables, a additional wing of five classrooms was added to the north side of the school. The wing provided a fully indoor connection between the classrooms wings and the play shed. In 1965 a library was added to the southern end of the school, creating a fully enclosed courtyard in the center of the school. In 1969 or 1970 the wartime-era portables were replaced with two wooden portables. The upper parking lot was also constructed around this time.

Overtime, the Bryant Woods name fell out of use, and the name was officially changed to just "Woods Elementary School".

In the 1980s the school's ceilings and floors were replaced, and the library was remodeled, a section of it now being raised and supporting a media/technology center. The play shed's walls were also reinforced and the cheap wooden floor of the play shed was replaced with nicer maple flooring. There was a plan to construct a permanent track and field around this time as well, for use by all local schools, yet those plans fell through.

## Demographics

In the 2019-2020 school year the school served 273 students. 68% of those students were white, 11% were Asian, 10% were Black, 7% were Hispanic, and 4% were other. The school generally performs well on state tests. Students from Woods Elementary go on to attend Pitts Middle School, then later Washington High School.