About
Sparta High School opened its doors in September of 1959 with a student population of about 420 in three grades representing three towns. Those towns included not only Sparta, but Hopatcong and Byram as well. Eventually Ogdensburg would also send its students to Sparta. Township students, until the late 1950's, had attended Newton High School, first by train and later by bus, but as the town grew, Newton could no longer handle the large numbers of students and requested that the sending district relationship be severed.
When the new school opened in 1959 it had just four pods, 28 teachers, and four major sports, football, basketball, wrestling and baseball. It was the first electric school to be built in the state. The curriculum and the co-curricular activities were very different from those of today. There were shops and home economics rooms, there was behind the wheel driving and there were gym suits for girls and to show how rural we were, there were cows on the athletic fields. In fact it was the job of two history teachers, Dick Cassels and Herb Orel, to chase them off the field every third period. In 1963, Sparta graduated the first group of students who had attended the school for four years. There were approximately 160 students in that class.
