A one-room schoolhouse serving the area once known as South Beach, or District #4, was built between 1815 and 1827 after an 1810 Vermont law required towns to raise a minimum of 1 cent on the dollar in property taxes to support town schools. Attendance varied with the seasons, dropping during planting and harvesting when children were needed on family farms, and in 1833 the school had 41 pupils between the ages of 4 and 18. Older children often helped teach younger ones while the teacher worked with other students, and instruction included arithmetic, spelling, reading, penmanship, geography, and English. As Vermont took a more active role in education, teachers were required to be certified in 1845, children ages 8 to 14 were required in 1864 to attend at least 3 months of school, local school taxes were removed to create a free public school system, a textbook law was established in 1894, and by 1904 the state had set standards for ventilation, sanitation, and lighting. In 1911 water coolers replaced the common water bucket and dipper. A dispersed population had required fourteen school districts in the town by 1869, and District #4's schoolhouse, formerly located on Lakeshore Drive just east of Prim Road, closed in 1928 in favor of the new Malletts Bay School because it could no longer meet state standards. In 2000, John R. and Angela MacDonald deeded the school to the Colchester Historical Society, whose efforts moved it more than four miles to Airport Park.