Commemorative bricks to help pay for construction of a planned outdoor classroom space at Butler Elementary School are being sold in preparation for the school’s 100-year celebration.
The engraved bricks – which cost $50 or $75 depending on their size, and can be purchased at bricksrus.com/donorsite/butler – are part of festivities culminating with a May 21 event.
“It’s a reunion of former students and staff,” said David Curry, a resource teacher at the school who is working with parent-teacher organization member Kate Dunne on plans for the 9 a.m. to noon event May 21 at the school, 1701 MacArthur Blvd., Springfield.
Curry, 58, previously was a classroom teacher at Butler and will complete 27 years there before he retires in June.
He said Butler is “just one of those schools that people have valued. You just have a lot of loyal teachers and staff.”
During the COVID-19-related shutdown of schools during part of 2020, Curry took time to write and compile a history book on the school that is available online at bit.ly/ButlerSchoolHistory.
He also is administrator of the “Butler School Centennial Celebration 1921-2022” group on Facebook (facebook.com/groups/butler100), which has more than 600 members.
“A lot of people love Butler School for various reasons,” he wrote in the book’s introduction.
“Whether they be a former student, parent, staff member or teacher, everyone who has spent time there has a personal connection that will last a lifetime,” he wrote. “Personally, I have enjoyed Butler School as my second home for over four different decades of my teaching career. Being here for its centennial celebration and documenting its history is the best retirement gift I could have ever received.”
The school, he said, was named after William Butler, an early settler to Springfield who was Sangamon County clerk from 1836 to 1841 and state treasurer from 1859 to 1862.
Butler was a friend and mentor of Abraham Lincoln, who was a “longtime guest at Butler’s house before he married Mary Todd,” according to Curry’s history.
One anecdote that Curry came across was that Butler paid off $400 in debts owed by Lincoln while the future 16th president pursued a law degree, though the two men later had what he describes as a “falling out.”
Construction of the three-level school began in 1921, and students first walked its halls in the 1922-23 academic year. The building was designed by the Helmle & Helmle firm, the same one that designed Feitshans School, though Feitshans was a high school before becoming an elementary school.
Butler’s growth mirrored the growth of Springfield, Curry wrote.
“As more students came to live within its boundaries, classrooms filled up,” he said. “At times, there may have been two classrooms for each grade level, but this may have expanded to three, maybe four classrooms per grade level, depending on the school year and population shifts in Springfield.”
Portable classrooms were later opened on the campus, and that trend led to additions at the school in 1932 and 1936.
The campus still has three portable classrooms that will be removed when a classroom-space addition and entrance upgrade are completed this summer as part of a $3.5 million project. More information about the current construction work is available at bit.ly/ButlerRenovations.
It appears that Butler first served children in first through fourth or fifth grade, with kindergarten being added in 1932, Curry said.
A 1936 addition on the building allowed the school to expand to seventh- and eighth-graders until 1957. Between that year and 2000, the highest grade offered was sixth. The school has been a K-5 school since 2000 and now has an enrollment of about 300 students.
Because of neighborhood changes and busing, the school has seen vast demographic changes over the years and is much more diverse than the virtually all-white student body of the 1960s, Curry said.
For example, about 44% of the current students are white, 35% are Black and 4% are Hispanic, according to Illinois Report Card data. And 54% of students are considered low-income and qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
The school diversity is “a good thing,” Curry said, because it can contradict biases. “We’re all people,” he said.
“We’ve always had tremendous support from parents and from businesses that are willing to help students in need,” he said. “We’ve always had a tremendous staff.”
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer for Illinois Times. He can be reached at 217-679-7810 or dolsen@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Thousand-Year Statehouse.
