COLUMBIA SPY

[This article by LNP staff writer Chip Smedley originally appeared in the Lancaster Sunday News on February 15, 2009 and was updated Sep 11, 2013. A small section at the beginning was removed for relevance for this publication. Columbia Spy has underlined certain passages for emphasis.]

"The failed attempt to merge Columbia and Hempfield schools, 1963-1970."

As noted county historian Jack W. W. Loose observed, "The reasons for the failure of the Hempfield-Columbia merger were about 95 percent social and 5 percent educational. Hempfield wanted nothing to do with that borough."

"There was something cultural there," Loose said. "Hempfield considered itself a suburban/rural type of school district and Columbia was more urban in nature."

Jacques Geisenberger, the attorney who served as special counsel to the Columbia School District during the merger process, was equally diplomatic.

"Hempfield was much larger, and it had a very different demographic," he said. "Politically it wasn't going to sell."

Frederick H. Smedley was blunt.

As far as Hempfield was concerned, he said, "Columbia was the dregs of civilization."

Smedley [editor's note: he is the father of the writer of this article] was born and raised in Columbia and still lives there. But in 1939 he went to work at Landisville Junior High School as a seventh-grade teacher. Except for a World War II stint in the Army, he spent his entire career in what became the Hempfield School District before retiring as an assistant superintendent in 1981.

About those "cultural differences?"

"Columbia is a river town," Smedley explained. "All river towns have reputations, especially those along the canal."

Columbia's image was rough-and-tumble from its turn-of-the-century heyday as a canal and railroad terminus.

When the merger was first broached, Smedley said, "Hempfield saw it as Columbia trying to get in on Hempfield's money."

Borough problem
That merger was first considered in the early 1960s when borough leaders realized Columbia had a problem. The times and economic growth had passed the borough by.

Encompassing 1.6 square miles, it was the smallest borough in Lancaster County. But with 12,000 residents at the time, it was also the most densely populated.

Prospects of industrial development to increase tax revenue were slim. Grinnell Corp. (now Anvil International), the largest employer in the area, used Columbia utilities but sat just outside the borough and paid its taxes to neighboring West Hempfield Township.

Town fathers were worried.

In a 1963 meeting of educational, business and government leaders, Columbia school Superintendent Harry Smoker invoked the doom-and-gloom phrase of the era when he declared county redistricting had "placed an iron curtain" around Columbia.

Initially, Columbia sought to merge with either the Hempfield or Eastern York districts, but were quickly rebuffed by both.

Leaders appealed to county Superintendent H.K. Gerlach, who told them it was not within his authority to promote a merger, so the borough took its case to the state's Board of Education.

In January 1965, Geisenberger took nine witnesses to Harrisburg to testify that the borough's school system was failing.

Lancaster school Superintendent Don Glass told the board: "Columbia cannot, in its present circumstances, continue to offer an adequate educational program as we know it."

Smoker threw his own district under the school bus.

He said the district had no central library and no trained librarian. In the absence of physical education teachers, classroom teachers supervised basic fitness requirements. Two school nurses served all of the borough's public and parochial schools. Columbia offered no language laboratories, no vocational studies and no remedial reading programs for elementary school students.

Smoker said, "What we can afford, in personnel and in finances, is what we will offer."

The community "has nowhere to go" Geisenberger said in his remarks to the state board.

"Neither topography, population, anticipated population changes nor any other factor validates retaining the separate district status of Columbia," he said.

"Columbia cannot offer an up-to-date, comprehensive educational program. Each new state requirement makes the borough's position more difficult, more unrealistic, more unjust."

Hempfield's opposing testimony was postponed that day because the state board had another pressing case to hear: Lancaster Township's arguments against a mandated merger with Lancaster city schools.

In the interim, Hempfield officials showed how sensitive the issue was.

In late January, an edition of the Hempfield High School student newspaper, the "Hempfield Flash," was distributed and then abruptly taken back by the administration.

Officials would not comment, but according to a report in the Intelligencer Journal, it became clear that an offending article summing up Columbia's argument for the merger was the reason.

An unnamed student staff member said the paper was withdrawn because its presentation of "another side of the [merger] story" upset the administration.

An unidentified "adult" at the school said the paper was withdrawn because students had "deliberately slipped the story" into the paper without permission.

Mergers ordered
The bomb dropped Thursday, June 10, 1965, when the state board decreed Columbia and Hempfield had to merge. (It also mandated, on the same day, the merger of Lancaster city and township schools.) All mergers had to take effect by July 1, 1966.

Hempfield officials complained they would have to raise real estate taxes 9 mills. They also refuted Columbia's claims that the borough was unable to provide a quality education program.

The Hempfield board declared, "Both districts are capable of providing a comprehensive program of education."

Hempfield, Geisenberger said, (along with Lancaster Township) appealed the board's decision to Commonwealth Court.

Yet, the merger seemed like such a done deal that the Lancaster New Era, June 12, headlined a story, "How Merger Will Affect Hempfield, Columbia Schools."

The article even explained how the consolidated district would go about choosing a name that would "have to be approved by the state's Department of Education and would not ... duplicate the name of any other school districts in Pennsylvania."

The state board's consolidation mandates to a number of districts across the state were met with lawsuits, but anti-consolidation forces were dealt a blow when, in June 1967, the state Supreme Court announced it would not hear any arguments related to school reorganizations.

Litigants continued to file cases in Commonwealth Court, further tying up reorganization efforts. The state Legislature extended the deadline for districts to meet mandated consolidations.

To move things along, county schools Superintendent Gerlach announced in August 1968, that representatives of Columbia and Hempfield should appear before the county board to present their arguments. Gerlach said the board would present its recommendation in October.

Some in Columbia, Geisenberger said, had started to get cold feet.

Hempfield superintendent "Arthur Hackman would never commit to two high schools, one in Hempfield and one in Columbia," Geisenberger said.

People in the borough began to fear, Geisenberger said, that Columbia was going to lose its high school.

A funny thing happened on the way to the board meeting.

"Politicians got involved," Geisenberger said.

When the county school board convened Sept. 17, the controversy ended abruptly with a whimper, not a bang.

Columbia and Hempfield officials issued a statement that said, in part, "The Boards of the Columbia Borough School District and the Hempfield Union School District have met and have agreed that it is in the best interest of both districts that each remain a separate school district."

The Intelligencer Journal reported the members of the audience were in a state of "either shocked anger or satisfaction" depending on the district in which they lived.

Wayne Hershey, president of the Columbia Education Association teachers union said, "We believe the best interest of education would be served by a merger. We are shocked by this action and we simply cannot condone the action of our board."

The sudden reversal confused many.

Columbia school solicitor Donald H. Nikolaus told the Intell, "Reappraisal of the respective districts' tax base and the overall financial aspects of the question" were factors.

Hempfield, he said, "has its own financial troubles. Hempfield has building problems, Columbia does not." Population growth in Hempfield would force new construction. "We will need only one elementary school in the next five to 10 years, certainly no more than that."

Construction in Hempfield, he argued, would be partially paid for by Columbia residents.

"We see the millage rate going to 71 mills. We now have 45 mills' tax on real estate in Columbia.

"The question becomes, 'Is enough money available to pay for the good education we all want for our children?' We believe the answer is 'no' from a standpoint of a merger."

Then he offered a somewhat cryptic glimpse into the future.

"Very soon," he said, "we will have a sizable annexation to Columbia. That is not just a mirage or a hope. It will happen."

That was the bottom line. In 1969 Hempfield school directors announced they would not oppose Columbia's annexation of 170 acres in West Hempfield Township, much of it occupied by what is now Anvil International. The company had announced an expansion, which would result in more tax revenue to the borough.

West Hempfield Township supervisors were not amused. They decried the annexation as part of a "secret deal" made between Columbia and Hempfield school officials to kill the merger.

In January 1970, township supervisors announced they would attempt to block the annexation.

"If the courts approve the annexation, not only will the taxpayers of this township have an additional tax load to carry, but all residents of the school district will have to make up the loss of school revenues."

Supervisor President William Binkley said when Columbia's annexation plans were originally announced, he believed the school district would oppose the action.

However, the supervisors' statement said, "At no time was the township a party to this arrangement. Our position is that the school board made a deal involving many acres of land, of which they are not the sole governing body, and by such actions have undermined the financial planning of township government."

Binkley, who wanted the public to know "the price they paid" to defeat the merger then asked for an expression of public opinion at the supervisors' next meeting. However, his hopes for outcry against the annexation never materialized and the deal was done.

Apparently, for Hempfield residents, the loss of revenue was a small price to pay to avoid any intra-district conflicts created by a merger .

"It was nasty," Smedley, the former Hempfield administrator, said as he recalled "midnight meetings" to plot strategies and hammer out a deal.

In the end, Smedley concluded, it was a simple decision.

"They [Hempfield] were willing to give up the assessment value of the [plant] to kill that merger."

Frederick H. Smedley, who is quoted in this article, is the father of the writer, Chip Smedley. The younger Smedley was also a resident of Columbia and graduated from Columbia High School.