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Pleasant Valley schools to celebrate 40th anniversary

VANCOUVER — When teachers opened the doors of the new Pleasant Valley campus to its first students, the youngsters probably thought the building seemed a little bare. The newly constructed school was completed earlier than expected, and the new chairs and desks had yet to arrive.

However, the lack of furniture didn’t stop the students from learning. The caring teachers of the Pleasant Valley campus impressed upon their pupils the importance of gaining knowledge even as they sat on the floor during the first two weeks after the new school opened.

Some Pleasant Valley teachers have worked at the schools for their entire careers. And some of them had as their students other teachers who now teach their own students in neighboring classrooms on the same campus. One of Pleasant Valley’s first grade teachers even remembers when his dad helped build the school.

Pleasant Valley’s current campus wasn’t its first. Pleasant Valley began as its own school district in the mid-1800s. According to the book “Battle Ground … In and Around” by Louise McKay Allworth Tucker, the first school building for the independent Pleasant Valley District No. 60 burned down. Community members built a second school building in 1880 at the northeast corner of Salmon Creek Street and 50th Avenue and moved it in 1932 to accommodate a third Pleasant Valley school built of brick at the same location. The brick school building was vacated by Pleasant Valley in 1976, but still exists at its original location.

Pleasant Valley District No. 60 consolidated with the Battle Ground Public Schools district in 1957. Battle Ground used bonds approved by the community to construct the current Pleasant Valley campus just a quarter mile south of the 44-year-old brick building on NE 50th Avenue. The new campus took less than two years to build.

Information provided by Battle Ground School District.

Kathy Janssen White-