After years of debate, Bath Township voters approved the creation of the Bath Consolidated School district in 1922, along with an increase in township property taxes to pay for a new school. When the school opened, it had 236 students enrolled in grades 1 to grade 12. The school's creation was controversial, but Monty Ellsworth wrote in his book about the disaster that consolidated schools had great advantages over the smaller rural schools they replaced.[3] All landowners within the township area had to pay higher ad valorem property taxes.