Valley Central School District
The Valley Central School District serves most of the Town of Montgomery in Orange County, New York, United States, and its three villages: Maybrook, Montgomery and Walden. Students also come from adjacent areas of the towns of Newburgh, Crawford, Wallkill, Hamptonburgh, and New Windsor. A small portion of Ulster County's Town of Shawangunk also sends students to this district.
There is also another school named Valley Central Public School in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
It operates six schools:
Berea Elementary School
Berea Elementary School is one of the Valley Central School District’s four elementary schools, serving grades K–5. The school is located at 946 State Route 17K in Montgomery, New York.History
Berea Elementary was added by the district in 1969 amid rising elementary enrollment, and the building was dedicated in November of that year. The school marked its 50th anniversary during the 2019–2020 school year.Campus
Berea sits along NY-17K; the district’s Central Registration Office and Administration Building are immediately behind the school at 944 State Route 17K.Academics and enrollment
As of the 2023–24 school year, Berea Elementary enrolled approximately 500 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to New York State Education Department data.East Coldenham Elementary School
East Coldenham Elementary School is one of the Valley Central School District’s four elementary schools, located at 286 State Route 17K in the Town of Newburgh, New York. It serves grades K–5; in 2023–24 the school enrolled 312 students, per federal education data.The school opened in 1960. On November 16, 1989, a severe wind event associated with a small tornado/downburst collapsed a cafeteria wall during lunchtime. Roughly 120 students were inside; nine students were killed and eighteen were injured. A tenth child died days later in a traffic crash outside the school that officials linked to the disaster’s aftermath.
In the years after the tragedy, the cafeteria was rebuilt and the campus added a memorial garden and stone monument; the district holds an annual remembrance each November 16 that includes a moment of silence and flags at half-staff.
Montgomery Elementary School
Montgomery Elementary School is located on Union Street in the village of Montgomery, New York, United States. It educates children from grades kindergarten through 5, most of them residents of the village or nearby sections of the Town of Montgomery.It is a Colonial Revival-style brick building dating to the 1920s. When it was built it was the school for all ages in the village, but became an elementary school when the district was created in the late 1950s.
In 2008 it was named a high-performing/gap closing school under the reporting requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Fifth-graders go on to Valley Central Middle School.
This school has 1 courtyard and a garden. It has 2 playgrounds 1 for grades K-2 and 1 for 3-5.
Walden Elementary School
Walden Elementary School educates children from kindergarten through fifth grade in the village of the same name, and adjacent areas of the surrounding Town of Montgomery.The building itself was opened in 1926 as the single school building for what was then the Walden School District, educating students of all grade levels from the village, a purpose still evident from the "Walden Grade-High School" entablature on the pediment above the four Corinthian order columns at the main entrance. When Valley Central was created from the merger of Walden and two neighboring districts in the late 1950s, it became just one of three elementary schools in the district.
The school was at the center of a small controversy in 2007. On November 15, an employee at the school received a bomb threat in email. School officials locked down the building, letting police enter and confining students to their rooms until an hour after their normal dismissal time. Parents who had objected to the school's decision, and its failure to notify them, kept a quarter of the students home the next day as a protest. School district officials defended their actions as required by the situation.