Fort Zumwalt School District
The earliest settlers of the area were too far removed from any formal
schools and had little interest in agriculture since hunting and trapping afforded the most
profitable livelihood. It was not until 1833 with the large immigration of German-born
settlers that farming became the number one livelihood. There were no public schools
during this period, and the people were not as generally educated as they are today. Most
parents made an effort to teach their sons how to read, write, and have working knowledge of
numbers, but could only do this if they themselves could read and write. This was not
always the case. As more educated German farmers came into the area, there was more
desire on their part for their children to be educated and as soon as they were able, they built
crudely constructed schools from logs or hewn timber with roofs of clapboard shingles.
By necessity, the school term was centered on the winter months as the young
men and boys were required for the planting and harvesting of crops. Wind often carried
snow under the shingles and into the loft. As it melted, students were hard-pressed to
find a dry place in which to study. There was only one room for all the students of all
age levels. Poor roads and much work to do provided for a relatively isolated life.
Community ties were strong and everyone knew their neighbors from miles
around. One of the earliest records of these small one-room schools was of the Mt. Hope
School on the Salt River Road (Now Highway P), which opened sometime around 1837. It could
not be called a free public school at its beginning for there were no free public schools in Missouri
until the Geyer Act of 1839. It remained in its original size for over a hundred years
and it closed in 1940 because of the public school's consolidation.
The German-born immigrants brought with them their customs, their religion,
and their language and many of these farmers sent their children to the Catholic schools at All
Saints, St. Paul, and Old Monroe. Some of the students spoke and used German in the
schools and there was still some study done in German into the early 1900's. The
formation of Assumption Catholic Church in 1871 was as much for the purpose of building a school as
it was for the place of worship.
The earliest public school in O'Fallon was built in 1869 in the area known as
Convent Park on the grounds of St. Mary's Institute. Julius Reichenstein was employed
as the first teacher by the townspeople. In 1910 O'Fallon outgrew the one-room school
and built a new school at the corner of West Pitman and School Streets. By 1947, the
town again outgrew the school and the one-room school was replaced with the brick building that
still stands on the site.
In 1947 a school district reorganization law was enacted which required each
county in the state to elect a board of education that would be responsible for developing a county
plan of reorganization. The St. Charles County Board of Education proposed combining
twelve small districts to form one large district. Voters approved the formation of this
district, the Central School District R-II, in 1949 but in 1966, the Board of Education changed its
name to the Fort Zumwalt School District. Joseph L. Mudd was the first superintendent of
R-II.
Prior to 1959, O'Fallon's public school students had to go to St. Charles for
their high school education. Fort Zumwalt High School held its first classes in the
1959-1960 school year in the building that now houses North Middle School.