Year Minimum Foundation building program completed c. 1954-55 Herctoma received a new building. Based on numbers printed in the Georgia Department of Education's "Annual Reports," Herctoma was already the only Black school in Echols County.

Year of total integration 1970. Herctoma was not initially kept as a school, but it appears to have been used as a kindergarten at some point. Why Herctoma high school students were kept in Echols County and not bused to Lowndes is unknown. Georgia Educational Directory numbers never list more than seven teachers across all grades at Herctoma and a few years had as few as five teaching across 12 grades. Echols would have been the smallest public Black high school in the state in 1960 by far (see below attendance number). Perhaps Echols was never able to reach an agreemet with Lowndes, or maybe Lowndes' own high school woes of the 1950s deterred both school boards (Lowndes had to scramble for a solution for a high school building during the last few years of the decade). Perhaps Echols did not want to bother with the transportation. Had Echols bused its students, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare would have come calling much sooner. In 1965, it cracked down statewide on systems sending students out-of-county and insisted upon those systems integrating their high school grades.

Known high schools Herctoma (Statenville) "Tales out of School," Bernice McCullar's column that ran in a good many newspapers touting educational progress around the state, gave the high school enrollment as 18 in 1960.

Known schools The Georgia Department of Education begins publishing a list of schools in 1956-57. 1956-57: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1957-58: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1958-59: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1959-60: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1960-61: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1961-62: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1962-63: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1963-64: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1964-65: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1965-66: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1966-67: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1967-68: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1968-69: Herctoma (grades 1-12) 1969-70: Herctoma (grades 1-12)

Additional notes