Esther A. Moglia

Esther A. Moglia was born on January 4, 1903. She trained at the State Normal School at Lowell, and the Billerica school reports give her home as Burlington both when she was hired in 1924 and again in 1940. She kept studying while she taught: by 1940 she held a Bachelor of Science in Education from the Lowell Teachers College, and by 1955 a Master of Education from the Boston University School of Education.

She came to Billerica in 1924, at 21, to teach the third and fourth grades at the Pinehurst School, a two-room wooden schoolhouse on Boston Road that had opened the year before. Her combined class regularly held more than 40 pupils. The school's other teaching post changed hands nearly every year, often filled by exchange teachers from the Lowell Normal School, but Moglia stayed for as long as the building was in use.

When the new brick school next door opened on December 1, 1931, she moved with the pupils and was given its fourth grade under Principal Thurza M. McElman. The building was renamed the Ditson School in 1934, and Moglia taught fourth grade there for more than twenty years. When McElman died on June 2, 1954, after 42 years in the town's schools, Moglia succeeded her as principal, and that September Milda M. Upley was appointed assistant principal to act in her absence.

In January 1956 the School Committee voted 4 to 1 to demand her resignation as principal of the Ditson, and she was demoted and transferred without the superintendent's recommendation. For the 1956 to 1957 school year she was principal of the Pollard School, where she also taught a fifth grade class, while K. Shirley Cowdrey took over the Ditson. The move was opposed by the Billerica Citizens' Council for the Public Schools, by Pinehurst parents and by many of her former pupils, and after some fifteen months of protest the committee voted in March 1957 to restore her. She was back at the Ditson that September.

She ran the Ditson for eight more years while Billerica's population grew rapidly. By December 1965 the school had 652 pupils, and her reports to Superintendent Frederick C. Riel dealt with crowded classrooms, pupils bused in from other parts of town, and a school library opened with the help of the Pinehurst Parent-Teacher Association in 1960. In July 1964 the community held a public celebration of her long service. Her last report as principal is in the town report for 1965, and in 1966 Francis X. Callahan was principal of the Ditson. She died in May 1969, at 66.

References

1. Pinehurst School teachers, 1924 (Esther A. Moglia appointed 1924; Lowell Normal; home Burlington)
2. Teaching staff, September 1925 (Grades III and IV at the Pinehurst School)
3. Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1931 (new Pinehurst school opened; Moglia assigned grade four under Thurza McElman)
4. Teaching staff, 1940 (Lowell Teachers College, B.S.E.; home Burlington)
5. Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1954 (Milda Upley appointed assistant principal of the Ditson School)
6. School report, 1954 (In Memoriam: Thurza M. McElman, died June 2, 1954)
7. Teaching staff, 1954 (Ditson School; Moglia principal)
8. Teaching staff, 1955 (Ditson School; Boston University School of Education, Ed.M.)
9. Teaching staff, 1956 (Pollard School; Moglia principal and grade 5)
10. Teaching staff, 1957 (Ditson School; Moglia principal)
11. Report of the Principal of the Ditson School, 1960
12. Report of the Principal of the Ditson School, 1965 (enrollment 652)
13. Report of the Principal of the Ditson School, 1966 (Francis X. Callahan, principal)
14. Lowell Sun, January 26, 1956, p. 27 (School Committee demands her resignation)
15. Lowell Sun, March 29, 1957, p. 29 (School Committee restores her as Ditson principal)
16. Lowell Sun, August 30, 1957, p. 22 (return to the Ditson School in September 1957)
17. Lowell Sun, July 3, 1964, p. 23 (community celebration of her service)
18. Lowell Sun, July 12, 1966, p. 13 (her service to the town's schools)