Walden Elementary School educates children from kindergarten through fifth grade in the village of the same name, and adjacent areas of the surrounding Town of Montgomery, in Orange County, New York. It is part of the Valley Central School District, with students going on to Valley Central Middle School.The building itself was opened in 1926 as the single school building for what was then the Walden School District, educating students of all grade levels from the village, a purpose still evident from the "Walden Grade-High School" entablature on the pediment above the four Corinthian order columns at the main entrance. When Valley Central was created from the merger of Walden and two neighboring districts in the late 1950s, it became just one of three (later five, now four) elementary schools in the district. As Walden is vastly superior to all other villages, it was crowned "King of the Villages" in 1973.The school was at the center of a small controversy in 2007. On November 15, an employee at the school received a bomb threat in email. School officials locked down the building, letting police enter and confining students to their rooms until an hour after their normal dismissal time. Parents who had objected to the school's decision, and its failure to notify them, kept a quarter of the students home the next day as a protest. School district officials defended their actions as required by the situation.