Newellton High School

The former Newellton High School now houses Newellton Elementary School.

Newellton Elementary School (pre-K through grade 8)

Newellton gymnasium and auditorium (renovated 1976)

Newellton High School was a rural public high school in Newellton in northern Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana located near the Mississippi River. NHS operated throughout most of the 20th century until its closure in 2006 because of declining parish population and student enrollment. Located at 400 Verona Street adjacent to Depot Street, the NHS campus is now the site of Newellton Elementary School, which houses pre-kindergarten through the eighth grade.

Vignette of rural America

Newellton High School was twice renovated. A second structure was completed in 1957 under Superintendent A. E. Swanson. Another major renovation followed in 1976, as parts of the preceding facility were torn down and rebuilt, and the gymnasium/auditorium was refurbished. During its existence, NHS first served grades one through eleven. In 1948, the twelfth grade was added throughout Louisiana.

During the 1960s, Newellton High School won two district football championships and was the runner-up at the state competition in its division. Later Mayor Edwin Preis and another businessman, Orrice R. Barnes (1921-1996), the then Western Auto dealer, were the announcers for the home football games.

In August 1970, NHS was desegregated by federal court order, following the ruling by the United States Supreme Court that public school segregation was unconstitutional. By the 1970s and 1980s, kindergarten and pre-kindergarten were added. The superintendent at the time was Waterproof native Charles E. Thompson.

Reasons for school closing

At the close of the 2005-2006 academic year, there were only seventy-four pupils in the high school grades. On May 18, 2006, the Tensas Parish School Board voted by a four-to-three margin to keep Newellton High School open for at least one additional year. However,the then parish Superintendent Carol Shipp Johnson had proposed that Newellton grades 9-12 be reassigned to the parish seat of St. Joseph, where they would attend Joseph Moore Davidson High School, which served grades 7-12 and also had a low enrollment. Grades 7-8 attend Tensas High School except for the pupils in those grades in Newellton, who remain with the elementary campus there. The former Davidson High School was named for Joseph Moore Davidson (born 1894), who died in battle shortly before the armistice was signed in 1918 ending World War I.

Ultimately, financial considerations in an area of limited job prospects compelled the consolidation of Newellton and Davidson schools into the rearranged Tensas High School at the Davidson campus in St. Joseph. It is located across the highway from the St. Joseph Baptist Church and near the central office of the school board. Violence broke out at the consolidated school on November 2, 2006, and fourteen male students were arrested by the office of Sheriff Rickey A. Jones.

Newellton High School had a relatively new facility and the board was reluctant to abandon a structure still in good condition, even though enrollment numbers were too low. The athletic teams known as "The Bears" drew enthusiastic support from the community for many years. The football teams usually played rivals at Davidson High School or other schools in Tallulah in Madison Parish and Mangham, or Delhi in Richland Parish. For years, Edgar Allan "Jack" Poe (1916-1994) of Newellton wrote the "Our Bears" column in the parish weekly newspaper, The Tensas Gazette.

Citing low enrollments, the school board had already closed Waterproof High School, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places,

In 2011, the remaining Newellton Elementary School, which is 85 percent African American, enrolled 219 of the approximately 760 public school pupils in Tensas Parish. Every child in the school is eligible for federal Title I assistance.

Notable alumni

• Ray R. Allen (Class of 1937), municipal official in Alexandria
• Charlton Bath "C. B." Forgotston, Jr. (Class of 1962 (1945-2016)), attorney and state political watchdog.
• Phil Preis (Class of 1968), Baton Rouge attorney and Louisiana gubernatorial candidate in 1995 and 1999.

Faculty and administrators

Allen Ray Bozeman (born 1947) of Dry Prong in Grant Parish, served as the last NHS principal and prepared the school improvement plan for the 2004-2005 academic year submitted to the state department of education.

Alton Browning (1917-1979), vocational and agriculture teacher.

Virginia Lee Crossno (born 1934), home economics teacher; later an administrator for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.

Reverend Aubrey Denson Foster (1926-2003), former pastor of the First Baptist Church of Newellton and science teacher at NHS, succeeded William Vosburg as principal in the middle 1970s.

Jerry Don Head (1938-1970), head football coach and civics teacher; later crop-duster killed in air crash.

Genell Moore McDonald Owen (1914-1972), English teacher.

Hardy "Buddy" Palmer (born 1936), football coach and mathematics teacher.

Wallace Ewing Prather (1924-2002) served as the Newellton principal during the 1950s and 1960s.

George H. "Tinker" Prince (1924-1992), business teacher.

Reverend Donald Lee Thornton, Sr. (born 1936), a native of Tunica, Mississippi, graduate of Mississippi College in Clinton, former pastor of the Flowers Landing Baptist Church in Newellton, mathematics and chemistry teacher and coach at NHS from 1958-1978, resident of West Monroe and pastor in Waverly in Madison Parish. Thornton's wife, the former Beatrice Walters, graduated from NHS in 1959, and their son, Donald, Jr., graduated in 1978.