John Eliot School History
The school is named after John Eliot, an English-born Congregational minister at the First Church of Roxbury. John Eliot was a missionary to the Indian tribes in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Eliot translated the Old and New Testaments of the Bible into the Algonquin tongue, which was considered a remarkable achievement since the Algonquins had little or no written language.
The John Eliot School was opened in 1956.
The first principal was Mr. John Hicks, with a staff of 13 classroom teachers. Mr. Hicks was principal form 1956-1977
In 1975, Mr. William J. O'Neil became principal until 1988.
Mrs. Miriam Kronish was principal from 1988 to 2002.
Mrs. Wilcox became principal in 2002 and is our principal today. There are now 19 classroom teachers, and the support staff has grown to include specialists in the areas of Health and Wellness, Art, Music, Media, Reading, Speech and Language, School Adjustment, Special Education, Physical Education, English as a Second Language, and METCO. We also have a full-time school nurse, part-time occupational therapist, school psychologist, and school aides.
In 2004 a new John Eliot School building was constructed on the same site.