Vermilion Local Schools will be saying goodbye to two of its own this year. 

At the end of the school year, both Mrs. Swinehart will be retiring and the beloved South Street Elementary will be closing its doors.   

Mrs. Swinehart is a 1974 graduate of our very own Vermilion High School.   After finishing her undergraduate studies at John Carroll University and Bowling Green University, she went on to earn her Masters Degree from Ashland University.  Since then she has been a very integral part of the Vermilion School System.

Mrs. Swinehart first started teaching at Vermilion Middle School (the current Vermilion Intermediate School) as a 7^th-8^th grade teacher in 1980.  She then moved to South Street in 1986 and taught both 2^nd and 4^th grade classes. 

The year of 1986 was a busy year for the former Miss Rini, this was the year she married her husband Mr. SWINEhart.  This is where the collection of pigs she currently has covering her office first started.   Over the years, kids have brought her numerous swines and at least for now, if she is not roaming the halls of South Street, she can be found working in her office among her humongous collection.

Tina and her husband, Jim, have a son and daughter who are also graduates of Vermilion High School that they are very proud of.

Vermilion Local School district went through a reconfiguration by closing Valley View Elementary on Beechview Dr. (the current Board of Education Office) and Lake Elementary on Aldrich Rd. (now the YMCA/Red Cross), thus condensing the schools by making K-2^nd at South Street, 3^rd-5^th at Vermilion Intermediate, and Sailorway Middle School becoming 6^th-8^th.   

Mrs. Swinehart then moved to the current Vermilion Intermediate School when the reconfiguration occurred and taught 4^th grade.

Mrs. Swinehart went on to become Principal of South Street Elementary in 1998 and has been a part of not only the parent’s lives that were taught by her, but their children as well.    She has touched many lives throughout the years, and both VIS and South Street PTOs will miss her dearly.

As for retirement, she is planning to travel the United States with her husband in a camper they have purchased.   They are planning to start their trip by heading west to visit all of the National Parks that our great nation offers. 

At the Up, Up and Away Celebration/Fun Fair on May 27, Mrs. Swinehart plans to auction off the swines she has collected through the years as she has no room at her home to accommodate all of them.   By attending the Fun Fair, you just might be able to win the one you might’ve gotten her.

South Street School was built in 1927 at a cost of $245,000.  It originally housed the “upper grades” 6 through 12.  The “lower school” students attended school in the building on State Street.  At the time of its opening, George Snyder was superintendent and C.K. DeWitt was principal.  The original structure was the east end of the present school building.  Like most school systems across the country, Vermilion’s was growing, and two additions were added to the building to include first through fifth grade.  In the 1950’s, overcrowding forced some classes to be held in Town Hall and neighboring churches until 1953 when the new high school on Decatur Street opened.  South Street then became an elementary school.  In 1988, the district closed Valley View and Lake School and moved all kindergarten, first and second graders to South Street Elementary.  Today there are 463 students enrolled.  The school has been well-maintained and still boasts the original floor and seats in the school gym.   Pictures of many of the graduating classes have been located and are hanging on the walls outside the gym.    It has proudly served thousands of Vermilion’s students over the past 83 years.

**How it all began…**

The land was situated just to the south of the muddy lane villagers understandably called South Street. It was bordered on the east and west, respectively, by Washington and Decatur Streets, and would likely have been equally divided by Perry Street if that path had not ended at South Street. During a better part of the 19th century great oaks, so common to the territory, grew wild and mingled boughs with an occasional elm, ash, crab apple, and maple tree casting a chorus of their quiet shadows across the earth. Later the wood would be cleared and become the "Pelton Farm". In the early 1920's the Vermilion Board of Education bought the farm, and again cleared and levelled the land from South Street to the Nickel Plate Railroad tracks to the south. Here they built a new village school they would call South Street School. And here Vermilion's education system, for all intents and purposes, genuinely entered the 20th century.

This included the building containing an auditorium/gymnasium, a home economics department, cafeteria, a school shop, a science laboratory, and numerous other amenities not contained in the old State Street facility. In addition to this the school property also featured an athletic field and room for several baseball diamonds. It was, to use a rather bromidic idiom, state-of-the-art.

At about the same time all the rural schools were closed. Six motorized busses had been purchased to transport some 200 children in from the country each day. And then, sometime in the mid-1930's, Vermilion's education board determined the facilities in the State Street School to be inadequate for the lower grades and South Street School was enlarged.

During the early forties and through the war years the school population grew and South Street School was enlarged several times. **

A beautiful building that has changed so much over the years, but has never let down the town of Vermilion.  Many parents have attended there and so have their children.  A lot of those same parents had the same teachers that their children have had.  That in itself is a beautiful history.   Hopefully such a beautiful structure will find a way to be utilized and remain in Vermilion for many more years to come.