USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Meriden > Years of Meriden 150: published in connection with the observance of the city's sesquicentennial, June 17-23, 1956 > Part 25
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This modified district plan which was to remain in force for nearly a quarter of a century was devised to keep the primary responsibility and control of the schools directly in the hands of the surrounding neighborhood, reserving certain important powers and checks to the town and the state. Under it the voters of each district elected each year a committee of one or more men to hire teachers and to run the schools. The voters of the town at large elected a Board of School Visitors to approve teacher hiring, to examine choice of textbooks, and to oversee the condition of the schoolhouses.
The Board of Visitors and the town selectmen acted as a joint board of finance for the schools and recommended an appropria- tion by the town sufficient to provide each district with funds for ordinary running expenses, including teachers' salaries, pay- ment for janitors, and fuel. Building and maintenance of the schoolhouses was left in the hands of the districts, which set up organizations for this purpose staffed with collectors, treasurers, and auditors.
Most of the duties of the Board of Visitors were carried out by the man designated Acting Visitor. This official was paid a small salary and his duties resembled in a limited area those of a modern school superintendent. He visited the schools, made recommenda- tions to the district committees, and evaluated the teachers and their work.
Control of the purse-strings was the power which the Acting School Visitor and, through him, the Board could invoke to improve district school conditions if it was deemed necessary. However, withholding town tax money from the districts was a drastic move, bound to stir up a storm, and Visitors only used it as a last resort, after important recommendations had been repeatedly and flagrantly ignored.
Such a situation arose over the schoolhouse in the Farms district, which Visitors repeatedly criticized and condemned over a period of years. Finally, in May of 1879, the district committee was officially notified that "no further appropriations of school money would be made until the accommodations were made satisfactory." By September a new building had been erected by the citizens of the district and was ready for use.
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The official Visitors' Report of 1864-65 draws a clear profile of the Meriden school system two years after the town assumed . control of its finances and made schooling free to all children. The experiment was hailed by the Visitors as an outstanding success. Through the new system a fairer distribution of the economic burden was attained. Already increased attendance was evident.
Children in Meriden between the ages of four and sixteen numbered 1,675, an increase of 137 from the previous year. An Academy and four private schools enrolled 250 of these children. During the year, 1,128 students were registered in the public schools. The winter term served 968 children, with an average attendance of 757. In the summer term 948 were enrolled, with an average attendance of 751. Three male and 21 female teachers were employed.
Reading was the most-studied subject in the curriculum, with a total of 1,112 students applying themselves to it during the two sessions. Arithmetic came next, with geography a trailing third. Grammar attracted only 111 students. History enrolled 77 students, while physiology and philosophy enrollment hovered around 25. Fifteen students studed Latin, eight wrestled with algebra, and one was learning bookkeeping.
Special praise was given to the "Grand Spelling Match" which was held at the Town Hall on two successive evenings. The programs of vocal music in several of the schools, daily reading of the Bible in class, and "light gymnastics" were also commended. It is worth remarking, for the sake of those who consider today's youth uniquely ungovernable, that the need for "firm govern- ment" is stressed as an ideal not always achieved in the schools of the 1860's. "We have found that those schools where teachers kept a daily report of deportment appeared the best," observed the Visitors.
In assessing the work of each individual teacher, the report is both specific and succinct. Of one unfortunate teacher in the intermediate department of the Corner School it is recorded for posterity that "though a Normal School scholar and an estimable lady, (she) did not seem to restore the interest and bring the school up to a desirable standard."
School finances as managed by the Visitors in the report are a model of tidiness and exactitute. Receipts from the state school
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fund of $1,892.90 plus $399.13 from the Town Deposit fund and $4,500.95 from the educational tax add up to $6,792.98. Expendi- tures of $5,761.25 for teachers' salaries plus $1,031.73 for fuel and other expenses total in expenditures $6,792.98.
A legacy from even more halcyon days is the mention of the Town Deposit fund. This is a memorial of the country's first venture into federal aid to education, originating in 1836. In this year our thrifty forefathers were faced with an overflow in the United States treasury to the amount of 28 million dollars. This money Congress lent to the states to be put out at interest. Connecticut divided her share, $763,661, among the towns, creat- ing the Town Deposit fund, the proceeds of which should be "forever" devoted to school purposes.
The rising population of the state's school children plus a falling interest rate have cut this fund so that it is today only a token of a frugal past. But back a century ago it was not to be scorned. It made a sizable part of the amount of money available for each potential pupil of the population which was $4.05. The amount actually spent, on a per-pupil registered basis, for a student's education in Meriden was $6.00.
Already, with the free school system only two years old, the shape of schools to come casts its shadow over the 1864-65 report. The Corner School, in the present downtown area at Church and Colony Streets, held one-third of all the pupils in Meriden and was growing rapidly. A new building would soon be needed. The pressing demand for a central high school was obvious. A move to do away with the districts and to give the entire school management to the town had been voted down, as it would be repeatedly in the next 25 years, but its merits were expounded by the Visitors. The report closes on a note still familiar to us in 1956: "The facilities for education are not commensurate with the increase of population in the town."
During the decade from 1860 to 1870 the population of Meriden spurted from 7,426 to 10,571. Increased school attendance in the years following 1863 was marked. In that year 57 per cent of the children of school age were registered in the schools, and among these the attendance averaged 66 per cent. The Connecticut compulsory education law passed in the 1870's required three months at least of education each year for all children between
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Meriden - October, 1936 Left to right in car: Meriden Senator Francis T. Maloney, President Roosevelt, Mrs. Roosevelt, Gov. Wilbur Cross
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President Theodore Roosevelt visits Meriden in 1903
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International Silver Company Factories A and J, Wallingford
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Administration Building and Factory under construction on South Broad Street
International Silver Company
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THE CHARLES PARKER COMPANY _ (1832
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The Charles Parker Company
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The Miller Company
New Departure Division of General Motors, Meriden
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The Napier Company
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Cuno Engineering Corporation
The Lane Construction Corporation
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The Connecticut Telephone & Electric Corporation
THE MERIOEN PERMANENT SAVINGS & LOAN ASSOCIATION
Meriden Permanent Savings & Loan Association Addition
CONNECTICUT BANK & TRUST COMPANY EAST MAIN STREET
Andrew F. Euston architect
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new MCM LV
Addition to East Main Branch, Connecticut Bank & Trust Company
MERIDEN SCHOOLS; 1860-1956
eight and fourteen. In 1874 attendance of those registered in the Meriden schools rose to 83 1/2 per cent.
The need for new school buildings was immediate and acute. Happily, a healthy spirit of rivalry sprang up among the districts, which vied with each other in their efforts to build bigger and better schools. During the 1870's came the first real departure from the little-red-schoolhouse concept of buildings and teaching. In the Center and Corner districts were built brick structures which by dint of counting the half-submerged base- ments and the gabled attic rooms could be labeled as containing four stories. Two-story buildings were erected in the West and Hanover districts. Prattsville built the North Broad Street School, an eight-room building described as a "model."
In 1879-80 the town distributed to the district treasurers for school operation $29,647.23. The districts raised $11,877.17 by taxes and $2,053 by loans, less than half what the town appropriated.
The early 1880's saw another wave of population increase and the erection of more substantial two-story brick buildings to meet it. The South Broad Street School and the Samuel Hunting- ton School on King Street belong to this period.
Several private schools flourished in the early and mid 1800's. The Meriden Academical Association in 1848 sold shares for the purchase and reconditioning of the old Baptist Church on the northeast corner of Broad Street, and for many years it served as a private school and a cultural center. The base- ment was rented for business purposes and the hall for traveling shows such as "Tom Thumb" and the "Indian Exhibition" in 1849. It was much in demand for meetings of civic and fraternal groups and religious and political meetings.
The stockholders never received any dividends from their investment and frequently collections had to be taken at stock- holders' meetings to meet small deficits. The school was run with no attempt to make money; the rent charged to the teacher was sometimes as high as $25 a quarter. The teacher ran the school independently, with what books and equipment he happened to own, and made his living by charging tuition. It was closed in 1869 when the newly built Center School proved more attractive to students in the area.
From 1847 to 1853 the Meriden Institute acquired a high
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reputation in secondary school training. It was located on the north corner of Church Street, fronting Colony Street. The building was later bought by the district to house the Corner School and the Institute removed to King Street, where it operated for some years.
In 1869 four private elementary schools were reported in operation. The popularity of the private schools diminished as public school buildings and educational techniques were improved during the next two decades. A private school conducted by Mrs. A. S. Booth enjoyed continued popularity and in 1894 had 111 pupils.
From 1879 till 1903 the German-American School Association taught children of German descent in a private institution designed to keep them familiar with the German language. The school was housed in a building on Liberty Street. Enrollment of pupils in the German-American school ran between 60 and 100 pupils.
As early as 1864, the second year in which a free town school system was in operation, the need for a central high school was pointed out by the Visitors. Some secondary school work was offered in most of the district schools but with one room and one teacher, often poorly trained, serving all the children it must have taken an exceptionally gifted and determined student to profit by advanced studies. Prior to this time the privately run Meriden Institute served the needs of most of Meriden's secondary school students.
The Corner District School, installed in the old Meriden Institute building on the corner of Church and Colony Streets, had by 1864 an enrollment of 275 pupils and three teachers and was the largest in the town. It was reported that this was the only thoroughly graded school in the town which "receives children in the elements and takes them through the successive stages of the common and higher English branches and also enables them to avail themselves of the facilities of a classical education."
This building burned and was replaced in 1868 by a large brick structure erected on what is now the municipal parking lot. At this time a regular high school department was organized in it and by 1880 pupils from other districts were flocking here for their secondary school education. High School Avenue owes its name to Meriden's recognition of the Corner School's training.
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A senior department was also organized at the South Center School and served more advanced students from other districts.
The fight for a Meriden High School was a long and stubborn one. Finally in April, 1881, the town skirted the controversial title by voting $3,000 with which to start a "Central school" and the second floor of the German-American school on Liberty Street was leased for classes. Henry S. Pratt was the first principal. Applicants had to pass an examination for admission. Of the 73 applicants, 54 passed and 51 actually entered the school in September.
A special committee of five was elected yearly by the town at large to administer the affairs of the High School as long as the school district plan remained in force. High school subjects were discontinued in all district schools. It is worth noting that Albert B. Mather, who began his teaching career in the Corner School in 1869 and was largely responsible for the success of its high school department, received recognition of his ability when, a few years after this, he was appointed Meriden's second superintendent of schools.
In 1882 the name "Meriden High School" was formally bestowed on the school, which graduated its first class of 13 members in 1883. The annual town meeting of that year voted to appropriate $50,000 to procure a site and erect a high school building. Later the sum was raised to $80,000. The High School on the corner of Catlin and Liberty Streets was formally opened in 1885 although its interior was not completely finished till 1890 when the number of students justified the use of all the rooms.
Meriden citizens took great pride in this first High School. The Century of Meriden in 1906 describes it as "This beautiful and imposing structure (into which) were incorporated the best ideas of beauty and utility of design, and the best materials and workmanship." Numerous gifts, large and small, from private citizens are recorded. Especially praised was its library which was reputed to be one of the best in the state.
The early 1890's saw another increase in population with more school building to meet it. This is the period of the school with the central octagonal corridor with rooms opening from it and enclosed pupils' wardrobes. The old John Barry School, still in use on Columbia Street, is the surviving example of this type.
In 1896 another major reform, long and stubbornly fought for,
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was finally accomplished. Since the beginnings of free schools on the district system, Visitors and education officials had advo- cated the abandonment of the districts and the consolidation of all schools under the town. "Our schools should be equal as well as free or we shall lose the benefits of experience and progress," was the way the Visitors put it in 1863. The Visitors made a similar recommendation which was again turned down in 1869. Echoes of the battle can be detected in the reports of 1875 and 1877.
Only five votes provided the margin by which the change was finally authorized in 1896. Under the new terms the town assumed the property and indebtedness of the districts and became respon- sible for all school costs. A committee of twelve men was designated to handle all school business and act as School Board, with an executive officer with the title of superintendent chosen to administer school affairs.
At the time of consolidation the town school committee reported the total value of all school property as being $234,987.42 though the combined reports of the district committees would have put it as $413,548. The indebtedness of the districts assumed by the town was $61,010.45, with ready assets listed at $2,488.91.
Some money had long been received from the state for school purposes. The beginning of state aid can be traced to the sale of Western Reserve lands in Ohio which yielded Connecticut more than two million dollars. This was invested for the benefit of the schools and was portioned out on a per capita child basis. In 1871 it provided $1.20 per scholar. In 1891, with more children in the schools, and a lower interest rate, it was 75 cents. Total state aid in that year, appropriated from the civil list, was $1.50 per scholar. In 1905 state aid had risen to $2.25 per child.
Evening school classes are first mentioned in 1872, when 127 pupils were registered. In 1874-75 the selectmen refused the use of rooms for class use and the project was given up. Edward C. Wheatley conducted a school for the West district in 1882-83 without any assistance from the town.
State aid for evening schools was forthcoming in 1886 and there ensued a boom in enrollment. Four hundred ninety-eight pupils were registered and the average attendance per night was 249. This was more than double the enrollment in Hartford and one third again that of New Haven. The town contributed liberally
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in financial support. Men teachers received $2.50 per evening and women $1.50. The next year attendance dropped to an average of 102 per session and the year after that to 45. The school was discontinued the following year.
In 1893 the state passed a law which required towns of 10,000 or more to maintain evening schools and appropriated $3.00 per average pupil membership on a 100-night basis for their support. The city had evidently lost its enthusiasm for evening schools because a threat of mandamus was required before one was opened. It was conducted by Mrs. Adele S. Booth with the help of scholars from her own private school, from the High School, and even from the Central Grammar School, and in its attempts to find quarters it led a roaming existence. Its cost to the city was only $300 a year.
Use of the High School was authorized in 1905 and teachers from the day school were appointed. This support was reflected in the enrollment which reached 338, representing 29 nationalities.
In 1912 the evening school was active with an enrollment of 491. The wave of immigration was reflected by the number of recent arrivals eager to learn the language and the ways of their new home. One hundred thirteen students were recorded in the non-English speaking classes and 131 in the non-English reading and writing. Thirty-five of the students had their origins in Germany, there were 25 from Sweden, 36 from Russia, 61 from Poland, 64 from Italy, and 64 from Austria.
In 1905 when school superintendent William P. Kelly reviewed the history of the schools for the Century of Meriden, the town owned 18 school buildings, nine of which were of brick. Ten had eight rooms or more, one had six rooms, four had four rooms, and three one-room schools were still in operation in the outlying districts. The total income to be expended for this year was $115,980, which included a special appropriation of $10,000 which was to furnish free textbooks to the pupils for the first time.
The first drawing supervisor had been appointed in 1896 and singing had been introduced under a supervisor in 1898. The first kindergarten was established at the Franklin Street School in 1903. Willis J. Prouty has been principal of the High School, where he had previously served as a math instructor, since 1899.
Average attendance at the High School climbed between 1897 and 1905-06 from 241 to 258. The entering class in 1897 numbered
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110, with 31 continuing to graduation and ten of that number continuing their education at college or some other institution after they left high school. In 1905-06 the size of the entering class shrank to 99, but the number graduating rose to 38, and 14 continued their post-high-school education.
School finances, according to Mr. Kelly, were complex. "The first selectman pays all the bills from the appropriation as fast as they are approved by the school committee, but turns over the money for salaries in a lump sum each month to the clerk of the school committee, who attends to paying the employees, who are on salary.
"The treasurer of the school committee receives the library grant from the state of $270 a year and a like amount of town funds from the first selectman. These are increased by a few tuition fees and other small sums. His receipts for 1904-05 were $848.58 and his expenditures for books and apparatus were $776.74.
"The principal of the High School collects tuition from non- residents, and with it buys books for the High School library.
"Thus, at the present time, four different persons receive, disburse, and account for the money used by the schools."
A $150,000 bond issue was authorized in 1905 for new school construction and for additions and modernizations of existing buildings. West Grammar School, still in use as Lincoln Junior High, is today's memorial to that building program.
By 1911 the public school enrollment was 4,433. The cost of transporting public school pupils was listed as: wagons, $750, electric cars, $359.
Meriden dentists volunteered their time and services in this year to examine all children's teeth, classifying 1,648 mouths as "bad," in need of immediate attention. The presence of 314 "exposed nerves" and 69 "ulcers" was discovered.
The census revealed that 714 children, 15 per cent of the school enrollment, were working instead of attending school. By 1915 this figure had been reduced by 65 per cent.
In 1907-08 the annual school cost per child was $38.60. By 1914 it had climbed to $42.35 and in 1916 it was $50.48. It was $89.64 in 1920, 112 per cent over the 1914 figure.
After a quarter of a century of operation the Meriden High School was bulging at the seams. A poem by a member of the
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class of 1911 described the crisis:
"Our school is overcrowded quite And something must be done
For being packed in like sardines I tell you isn't fun.
The classes in geometry Are hooked upon the walls;
And Cicero and Caesar Are murdered in the halls.
Now won't the citizens, humane, Please vote us a new school!
And if they will we promise that We'll try to keep each rule."
This moving plea was finally answered when a site was secured near the corner of Pleasant Street, and the opening of the present High School building was solemnized in 1913.
The financial statement for 1917 shows a total of $209,982 spent, and a budget of $251,025 was requested for the year 1917-18. The average size of classes at this time was 34, with an 18-pupil average at the High School. A marked improvement in the drop-out rate in the upper grades was evident over a ten-year period.
During the first two decades of the twentieth century a steady rise in teachers' salaries is evident, paralleling the rise in the cost and standard of living. In 1906 the beginning salary for teachers was $400, with a $40 per year increase to a top of $560 or $600 dependent on the taking of some additional education courses. By 1908, $480 was set as the minimum and $720 the maximum for grade school teachers. Women who taught at the High School could look to a top of $950 while men could qualify for posts paying as high as $1,600.
In 1915 the maximum was $760 in the grades with a top of $800 set for the eighth grade. Women principals found their salaries pegged at $1,000. The 1917 schedule called for a $580 starting salary which ran to a top of $900 for eighth grade teachers. Salaries for women teachers in the High School were between $750 and $1,200 with the maximum for men at $1,700. Women who were heads of departments were paid $1,350 and men received $1,850. Forty-two per cent of the budget increases
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due to teacher salaries occurred between 1911 and 1917.
Meriden ranked fifth among 67 cities in the East of comparable size in 1920 in regards to median salary, with a minimum of $1,000 and a maximum for men teaching in the High School of $2,500.
Open-air classes were begun in 1918 in part of the old Church Street School to serve pupils with a history of personal or family tuberculosis and those who were underweight and in poor physical condition. They were a popular educational feature of the times. The cost to the city in that year was $7,292.18. In 1920, 53 children were registered in the open-air classes.
The Meriden Trade School opened its doors in September, 1918. Designed to meet the needs of the young men of Meriden and surrounding communities for training in the mechanical arts, it was organized by agreement with the State Board of Education which furnished equipment and materials and paid the teachers. Meriden provided and maintained the building, furnished the heat, light, and power, and paid half the janitors' fees.
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