Background
America was overwhelmingly rural, and in rural areas, four-year high schools were rare. Small-town schools generally taught students only through grade eight, or they offered two more optional years of instruction. To earn a four-year diploma, one had to attend a high school in another, likely larger, town. In Hicksville, for example, such pupils might go to Mineola or Hempstead High to finish their studies.
Of course, most older Americans had never even attended high school. As late as the 1920s, Hicksville's School Board was headed by a man who had left school after the seventh grade. Ironically, all the teachers at the village's Union School (see below) had educations superior to his, because to teach, one had to graduate from a normal school, the forerunner of a teachers college.
In 1853, New York State established a legal structure to make high school education more readily available, especially in rural areas. A group of small towns could band together with a town that had a four-year high school, offering youth in all the towns in this educational "union" the opportunity to earn high-school diplomas.
For whatever reason, the law-makers named such groups "Union Free School Districts." Any authorized feeder school in such districts was called a " Union School.
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