Some items of note in the letter:

• Tuition for the year was $140. (By the third year of the school, it had risen to $200.)
• A hot lunch cost a quarter.
• The school year did not begin until after Labor Day.
• The dress code was quite simple. T-shirts were permitted as long as they weren't the "loose-fitting" white kind. Any neat pants were OK except for jeans or dungarees.

When students walked into school that first day, steamrollers were finishing the blacktopped basketball courts behind the classroom building. Otherwise, the facility, which had been delayed a year by a steel workers strike, was ready for business.