Remembering Washington School’s Founding Principal
When the Huntington School Board decided a new school was needed to serve the southeast section of the district, trustees turned to an old hand in Leslie E. Read to organize Washington Elementary School and lead it through its early years.
Mr. Read cited a high school science teacher’s influence with his decision to embark on a teaching career. But, that decision was delayed by many months. He had been driving a coal truck for a full year following his graduation from high school in Penn Yan, New York. He had plenty of time to think while driving.
“My science instructor never talked to me about becoming a teacher, but I had such a high regard for him that his influence later became a prime reason for me to enroll in Brockport State Teachers College,” Mr. Read said in a 1956 interview. He later earned a teaching license at Brockport.
Mr. Read came to Huntington in 1928. He initially taught math and science on the high school level. This was a time when a teacher needed merely to have completed a relatively abbreviated course of study to be certified and need not have graduated from college.
But, while teaching in Huntington, Mr. Read studied during evenings and weekends at New York University, eventually obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree there. He would later earn a master’s degree, too.
After Robert K. Toaz Junior High School opened in September 1939, Mr. Read transferred from the high school to that building, continuing to work as a math and science teacher.
A few years later in 1943, he was named principal of Main Street and Nathan Hale schools. This was also a time when one principal typically covered two school buildings simultaneously. Main Street School was located adjacent to the high school and still stands today as the smaller of the two buildings in the Town Hall complex.
Main Street School was filled with many students at the time, but Nathan Hale School, located on Bay Avenue (today it still looks like a school but is carved into condominium units) had an enrollment of just 80. In 1946, Mr. Read moved over to Lincoln Elementary School, which was located on E. 9th Street in Huntington Station, adjacent to St. Hugh of Lincoln Church. It, too, still stands and still looks like a school, although it now houses apartments.
While Washington Elementary School was under construction, school trustees settled on Mr. Read as its founding principal. He told parents that it was his belief that the most effective school required a happy, relaxed atmosphere. “The children are expected to develop and use good manners and self control,” he said. “They know it is expected.”
Prior to coming to Huntington, Mr. Read served as a teaching principal of a three room school in Mumford, New York where he handled sixth, seventh and eighth graders in the one room. From there he headed to P.S. 26 in Rochester for a year, teaching an “opportunity” class for “slow learners.” It was a special year since it was during that time he married Gertrude Miller, who later taught first grade at Woodbury Avenue School in Huntington.
A popular figure in Huntington, Mr. Read was a participating member of the Huntington Station Rotary Club. He enjoyed fishing, clamming and boating in his free time. He was fond of saying that “out on the water, there’s no one that can hear me sing,” which he admitted he did in “a rather dismal sort of way.”
During his years in Huntington, Mr. Read resided at 11 Hemlock Avenue, which is located between New York Avenue and Nassau Road, not far from what was then Toaz Junior High School. He continued leading Washington through the close of school year in June 1966 when Jack Abrams took over as principal.
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