The History of Hastings School
The Hastings School is named for the Hastings family who were among the early settlers of what was called Cambridge Farms, part of which is now called Lexington. The Hastings family came to America from Suffolk, England in the late 1630s.
The Hastings family assisted in building Lexington’s first meeting house, helped to buy the Common for the town, and fought in many wars, including the Revolutionary war of 1775.
Dr Robert Hastings (born in May 1718) lived on Hancock Street and was reputed to have been one of Lexington’s first doctors. Dr. Hastings’s house still stands today and was also the home of his father, David Hastings, and his son, Dr Robert Hastings.
It is Dr Joseph Hastings’s land that Hastings School stands on. His house and two other Hastings family homes can still be seen today on East Street. Dr Joseph Hastings was a surgeon during the Revolutionary War.
The Hastings School opened in 1949. In 1954, additional classrooms were added, bringing the total to 19.
Two years later (1966), the Lexington School Committee unanimously approved accepting 25 students from Boston into Lexington schools. This was the first time this had been done. Concord and Lincoln soon followed.
The first kindergarten programs in Lexington public schools began in 1967.
In 2005 the original Hastings school was closed and all students and staff moved to a temporary home in the old Harrington building on Maple Street. Just after February vacation 2007, students moved back to a state of the art, brand new school.
The official ribbon cutting took place in April 2007 at the start of the annual Hastings Fair.
