Mannheim ES History
Opened: 1946
Closed: 2011
Mannheim American Elementary School was in the Benjamin Franklin Village, which was part of the Mannheim American Military Community. Mannheim is an industrial city with a metropolitan area.
The first school in the Mannheim area was opened on 14 October 1946 in a house in Feudenheim. Enrollment was fifty students. The enrollment increased, and the school expanded into two houses which were used until 1949. In that year, the school moved to a renovated barracks at Funari Barracks and continued there until the opening of the new school building in Mannheim-Kaefertal in October 1952. The large yearly increases in enrollment necessitated the construction of another school building in Mannheim-Kaefertal, which was completed in August 1955. The first Mannheim school building became the high school.
The enrollment for the elementary school for the 1956-57 school year was 1,276 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
The elementary school consisted of a complex of sixty-four classrooms, including two that were designated for learning development classes. The building had four wings of fourteen classrooms each and two smaller buildings for kindergarten. Ancillary personnel included two counselors, a school nurse, and specialists for speech, reading improvement, English as a Second Language, learning development, music, art, physical education, and media.
For the 1981-82 school year, there were 1,700 pupils in grades kindergarten through five with seventy-three faculty. The number of students at the school remained constant until the mid-nineties. For the 1993-94 school year, the enrollment dropped below 1,700. There were sixty-one classroom teachers and forty-seven specialists on the staff. In addition to the classroom specialists for art, music, physical education, and media, the specialists included two school nurses, an educational prescriptionist, a school psychologist, three counselors, a teacher for English as a Second Language, a teacher for behavior disorders, a talented and gifted teacher, a compensatory education teacher, and a speech therapist.
The next school year the enrollment dropped to 1,450 students. The number of classroom teachers dropped to fifty-seven, and there were forty-two specialists.
For more than sixty-six years, American children attended the DOD schools in the Mannheim community. At its peak, over 2,000 students were enrolled in the school. Only 128 remained to finish the final year.
The closing ceremonies began with the colors presented by Boy Scout Troop 137. Students then sang “The Wildcat Boggie”. Fourth graders recited the Pledge of Allegiance orally and in American Sign Language. Other songs and speeches followed. The students' final number was a skit based on the song “So Long, Farewell,” from the musical A Sound of Music. Afterward, the crowd tossed confetti and adjourned to the back of the school for a picnic.
The school closed at the end of the 2011-12 school year. The last school principal was Sharon Overstreet.
Information from DOD School Information Guides and internet resources