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I was in elementary school from '83-'88 and most of the TV's were early '70's era 23" RCA tube type CTC39 metal cabinet color TV's that were connected to Sony U-matic tape machines and the equipment lived on tall roll around metal carts. The TV's had special jacks on the rear and the speaker tilted out to reveal the user controls, similar to standard consumer RCA TV's. There were only a few TV's in the school and they had to be reserved in advance by the teacher who needed one. There were also a couple of newer solid state Zenith system 3 TV's and one of the old RCA's that remained set up in the library. I don't ever remember watching any OTA programming on these. Most of the material was provided by PBS on U-matic tape format. We didn't get VHS until around '87. In '89, the schools got new 19" Magnavox color TV's in each room and they were connected to a master control center where all a teacher had to do was tell the A/V dept. what tape to play at what time.
My elementary school switched from incandescent to fluorescent lighting between my 1st and 2nd grade years and it was also during this time that they installed ceiling fans in most of the classrooms. That school didn't get A/C until the year after I left there. Before that, we relied on ceiling fans and some OLD Emerson pedestal fans with open blade guards that would likely not be allowed today. Back then, we had sense enough not to stick our fingers in the fan. We had steam heat and a blower powered radiator in each classroom. The desk were probably 30 years old and we still used old projectors, film strip viewers, old tube califone record players, etc.
I called a friend of mine, who is in charge of A/V for the district, to see if any of that old equipment was left. He told me that they had a house cleaning, aka - auction, several years ago and very little of the stuff actually sold. The rest went to the crusher, which is sad.
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