USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Somerville > Report of the city of Somerville 1888 > Part 7
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
it is the policy of the Board to try no experiments, nor trifle with the valuable trusts committed to their charge, yet some changes are being gradually made that the experience of other municipali- ties, similarly situated, have proved to be useful and desirable. In some cases the benefits will not be immediately apparent, for, even after a change has been made by the Board, it is intro- duced very slowly, and nothing radical is allowed to interrupt the progress of the schools.
By the resignation of Mr. Joshua H. Davis, the city lost the valued services of a superintendent whose long employment in the interest of her schools had made him intimate with the wants and conditions of every department of the work and section of the city. He had a personal acquaintance, not only with all the teachers, but many of the scholars. This knowledge was inval- uable to the Board, in the consideration of many of the questions of detail which are constantly before them. His policy was ever to hold fast to that which had proved valuable to the pupils, and await the experience of others before adopting changes that were urged upon his consideration. The general satisfactory condi- tion of the schools as he left them, show him to have been well abreast of the times in all educational lines of thought and prac- tice. We take pleasure in paying tribute to his efficient and progressive administration. His genial and courteous manner will ever be remembered by his associates in the school work of the city. In him the scholars had a warm friend, and the exam- ple of a consistent Christian gentleman. With his farewell report, we appropriately close the first volume of our school history as a city.
At the February meeting, the Board unanimously elected, as the successor of Mr. Davis, Mr. Clarence E. Meleney, of Pater- son, N. J., in accordance with the recommendation of a commit- tee appointed to nominate a Superintendent of Schools ; and we feel certain that his first annual report, as herewith submitted, will be read with interest, and that the action of the Board will be endorsed by the citizens, who will feel that the schools are in good hands, and under a wise and progressive management. He comes to us a man in the forefront of educational progress, with an experience that has left a record, honorable to himself and creditable to his city. We desire his services among our schools
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REPORT OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
as Superintendent ; and that the Board may have this, the rela- tions of Superintendent, Secretary of the Board, and Principals should be clearly defined as to their duties and responsibilities. We cannot afford to have the time of so valuable and important an official as the Superintendent altogether taken up with the details of his position. The Principals also are needed in their positions at the head of the teaching force of the large buildings. Most cities have two masters in each building of ten or twelve rooms. We have but one, and we cannot spare them from their places, that they may help out the Superintendent while he is occupied with detail. These faithful public servants are all doing what they can in harmony, and by mutual assistance, to promote the educational interests of the city ; but we would sug- gest the importance of having such accommodations furnished the Superintendent as would enable him to attend to the super- vision of the teachers and scholars and relieve the Principals, that they may devote themselves to their legitimate spheres of action, which are fully as important and of more direct and per- sonal influence on the welfare of their classes and character of the scholars.
The purchase and distribution of text-books and supplies are of such infinite detail that their demands upon the Superin- tendent, together with the time required for the selection and employment of teachers, have of late taken him almost out of the schools in his supervising and advising capacity. This year an office has been provided for the use of the Superintendent, which has been temporarily located in the Public Library Building. An assistant has also been furnished, and the amount of business that is transacted here, in the interest of the schools, shows its importance and necessity. It is proposed to put this department on a permanent and substantial basis, and organize it in a prac- tical way. The Superintendent's office becomes, as soon as established, headquarters for all supplies, etc., covered by the appropriation for school contingent, which now amounts to about twenty thousand dollars; and this, together with the school salary appropriation, makes an amount of clerical work that must be provided for. Other departments of the city have their clerks and store-rooms; but, as it is only recently that all text- books and supplies have been furnished at public expense, on
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
account of which this department has gradually grown to its present proportions, no provision has been made for it. In one of the new school buildings hereafter to be erected, a large room should be provided as the office of Superintendent of Schools, with appropriate store-rooms for supplies of convenient access.
No supplies should be sent to the schools from the dealers, but they should be received at this office, and the bill for the same should here be checked. The quality of the materials should be examined, that the Board may be certain that the city gets the benefit in number, amount, and quality of every article paid for. From here the supplies can be distributed to the vari- ous buildings or teachers by authorized requisition. All text- books not in use in the schools should be returned to this office to prevent accumulation in the closets of the various buildings, and allow an inspection that would discard the worn out, and repair the damaged. Here such property could be insured against loss by fire, and accounted for against negligence and carelessness. Of course this means what some would call "red tape "; but it is necessary with all matters of public finance, that there should be established reasonable guards against mistakes and frauds, and a certain amount of convenient arrangements for the performance of public service by elected officials, who are the responsible parties in such matters.
Such a department will properly admit of a reconstruction of the financial methods of the Board, so that sub-committees, by a more intimate knowledge of the purchases in their various de- partments, may approve the bills for the same, rather than that the whole duty should be imposed upon the Committee on Fi- nance.
No one other than a regularly authorized committee and no member of a committee, except by direction of that committee, should contract a bill of any kind, for any purpose, on behalf of the school board.
It has been suggested that the Committee on Text-Books, Music, Drawing and Penmanship should make all purchases authorized by the Board and approve the bills for the same ; and that a Committee on Printing should authorize and recom- mend all blanks etc., to be used by the schools. It is impossible to do this in this way without some one place and some clerical
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REPORT OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
assistance, as no man can give the time required for such duties on the part of the committee if he must arrange with all the teachers and visit all the schools; but, with the facts all at hand in the Superintendent's office, the legally authorized officials will not find it necessary to delegate their duties to one who should be devoted to other branches of the service.
Additional school room accommodation is a subject that re- quires more or less space in every school report. Our immediate wants in this direction have so long been under consideration that the needs of Wards Two and Four have come to be gener- ally recognized. We feel encouraged to think that the coming year will see at least two new buildings well under way, if not completed. Our rapid growth as a city demands a careful consideration of this important question. Nothing proves so attractive to the class of citizens we would invite to become residents of our city as good schools in commodious buildings. We are now so crowded that not only is the efficiency of our schools restricted, but the health of the teachers and pupils is endangered by the fact that so many are confined in the rooms in excess of the number that the air space will accommodate under sanitary restrictions. In many instances we are employing two teachers in a single class room, a practice at once expensive and inefficient. And the outside rooms employed for school purposes are unsatisfactory to the school authorities because of their isolation, which takes from the pupils the advantages of the association and the direction provided in larger buildings ; and to the parents, because they feel that their children are not receiving all the benefits given the children of their neighbors, who are not obliged to put up with these make-shifts.
Several of our school buildings are so old that it must soon be as important a consideration to provide for their abandonment as to provide additional school accommodations.
The primary schools are doing good work. The budding intelligence of the little folks is being directed by means of methods that will please and gratify any who have not recently visited this department.
The Kindergartens established this year have proved valuable additions to this work, although, in the main, they are overflow classes from the crowded primary schools. We have not yet felt
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
that our finances would warrant their establishment for scholars under the school age, although in some sections of the city, where " children are five at a very early age," they would accomplish for the children of poor parents what many of our citizens are doing at home, or at private expense.
The committee are in hopes, at some early day, to extend the systematic instruction of music to this grade, by rearranging the course of musical instruction. The advantages of this instruction are so easily apparent in other cities, that we should no longer hesitate in this matter.
The grammar schools are the nucleus of the whole system of public education in our city, and of great importance from the fact that many of the scholars have no other educational op- portunities. The corps of teachers in charge is at once complete and efficient, and the schools show good results.
It is important that the valuable services of these trained and successful teachers should be given as much to the pupils as possible, rather than taken up by the preparation of examina- tions and classifications of results, which do not advance the pupil nor improve the teacher. Both should have every oppor- tunity to impress each other with their own individuality. We should strive to throw off the yoke of educational communism, of too much system, and too close confinement to a comparison by percentage whether the standard is absolute perfection, or the work of the best scholar, and return to greater individual latitude. The influence of the Principals, as men of affairs, of social ascendency, is so important a factor in the character building of the pupils of our upper grades, that we should have their constant attendance in these classes during school hours. And, while they may supervise the schools in their respective buildings, they should not act in the capacity of sub-superinten- dents, with jurisdiction over their so-called districts.
In the grammar grades the course of study has been so modified as to admit sewing and a more extended course of drawing. This does not mean that the course is crowded to excess, or curtailed in the essentials, to admit fancy or technical branches; but the plan is, as will be seen in the Superintendent's Report, to im- prove and vary the work.
The evening schools have been a success wherever the demand
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REPORT OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
of a sufficient number has warranted their maintenance by the committee. The school for elementary English branches in the Luther V. Bell Building and the drawing school in the High School Building should be provided every season. We are in hopes to have some suitable place for the drawing classes, where more attention can be given to the mechanical drawing. Before the establishment of school-rooms in the High School Hall, which took our only available room for this use, we had a very success- ful class in this work. Our experience shows it to be something sought for by a class of young men engaged in mechanical pur- suits, whose ambition and desire to learn should be encouraged in every reasonable way. The experience of cities with evening schools goes to prove that drawing and high school are more successful than grammar schools, from the fact that the class of pupils who attend the latter are engaged in such laborious pur- suits that they are too tired to do much studying in the evening after a day's work. .
The High School, by the last catalogue, has a membership of four hundred and twenty-two, with one hundred and thirteen in the college course. The school is overcrowded and has outgrown its limits, and the problem of its future is now before the Board. Its success as a preparatory school for college has made the Som- erville High School justly famous, and we are proud of its fame. But, as so few of the scholars aspire to college, even of those who select the college course of study, this being selected by many with the idea that it affords the highest discipline and best use of the time, it is to many of the Board of doubtful expe- diency to enlarge the school on its present basis.
Our population, from its composition, will always demand a large High School - that is, there will always be a large number of scholars whose school life will not end with the grammar school. Many citizens think their boys are not quite ready for business life at the end of the grammar school, and, having no employment for them at home, send them to the High School to spend an interim of time. Such do not want the college course, but select the English course. This course, as now conducted, does not awaken such interest and enthusiasm as gives the parents an idea that the time is well spent, and for this reason the efficiency of the school is criticized. The remedy for this, in the opinion of
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
many of the Board, is a division of the High School and the establishment of an English and a Classical High School, each in a building of its own. The English High School should have, in addition to the present course, a more complete commercial course, and be fitted with a complete outfit to supplement the course of manual training and industrial education. Much more attention should be given to physical training. Gymnastics and military tactics should have a prominent place in the course. We should impress upon the minds of our youth that honor and dis- tinction lie in the path of the mechanic and manufacturer, as well as the merchant or professional man. We have held up the professions so long in public preferment that the ranks of indus- trial employments are deserted by almost all our American youth of means and opportunity.
Time was, and not long ago, when the boys and girls had the advantage of constant association with their parents in the em- ployments of life. The home, the farm, and the work-shop were one and the same, or so nearly contiguous that the children assisted in the regular duties of life, or could overlook them to their advantage. Manual training and object teaching were thus taught by the parents themselves in ways most effectual, that produced men and women so broad in their general make-up as to make useful members of society and the bone and sinew of the nation. School and its duties were limited to a few weeks in the district school, which were in reality the vacation time of the year. The advantages of the social economy and condition of life peculiar to those times are often ascribed to the district school, as, by association, school and education are terms used in the relation of cause and effect, as though a person's education is entirely the result of his school life. But, as education means the drawing out and rounding to effective availibility of all the faculties, a moment's consideration will show that the few weeks in the year spent in the district school could have had but a slight influence in the results of which we are so proud.
Social conditions in our city are different. These intimate relations of parents and children in the work of life no longer exist, and both are losers. Business and home are entirely sepa- rate and distinct. Our city is a collection of residences, and the business, except for domestic supplies, is almost entirely car-
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REPORT OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
ried on in the neighboring city. Our boys and girls are at school or at play, unable to assist or overlook any of the mechanical duties of life where the work is in actual process. This want is what educators feel should be supplied to the youth of to-day by our public schools. T. ere is a growing feeling that the whole forty weeks of the school year should not be spent in mere memoriter exercises, to the exclusion of practice in manual or physical exercise that will train the whole child by the use of all his faculties. We must make the schools so broad in their routine as to supply the child in school with the same general training that farm and village life give at home or out of school.
The foregoing suggestions are mainly in the line of our present work. They do not mean radical reform or any disparagement. Our schools should enlist our best endeavors ; and it should be the ambition of all to place our city first in the Commonwealth in the line of school work. And the work must be done with an eye to our resources, and the finances should be carefully man- aged, that the best results may be accomplished with the means available. We cannot expect all these advantages at once ; but, with a clearly defined purpose and determined energy in the right direction, much may be accomplished.
Respectfully submitted,
JAS. F. BEARD, H. P. HEMENWAY, N. W. BINGHAM, H. P. MAKECHNIE,
Com. on Annual Report
SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
To the School Committee of the City of Somerville : -
GENTLEMEN, - In compliance with your instructions and in conformity with the rules of the School Committee, I have the honor to submit my first annual report upon the condition of the public schools of this city for the year 1888.
The following is a summary of the statistics, which may be found in detail in the appendix : -
Population of the city, United States census, 1885, 29,992
66 " 1888 (approximately) .
35,000
Number of persons in the city between five and fifteen years of age in May last, as ascer- tained by the truant officer ·
In East Somerville District 1,245
Prospect Hill
.
2,319
Winter Hill
.
864
Spring Hill 66
801
West Somerville
730
Number between eight and fifteen years of age 4,206
VALUATION.
Valuation of the city, May 1, 1888 ·
$28,765,400
Real estate
$26,488,200
Personal estate
2,277,200
Rate of taxation .
.014
Estimated value of school property
$428,554
DWELLINGS.
Number of dwellings in the city, May 1, 1888 5,941 Number of dwellings constructed during the year,
or in process of construction 256
5,959
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REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS.
SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS.
No new school-houses have been erected during the year. The Board petitioned the City Council to move the Prospect Hill building to Concord Square, and to erect a twelve-room building on its site. This has not been done, however. The previous year, the needs of the Prospect Hill District were so urgent, that the School Board requested the City Council to build a new school-house south of the Fitchburg Railroad, and the Committee on Public Property selected a lot of land for the purpose, in obedience to the instructions of the Council. As nothing has yet been done to relieve the crowded condition of the schools in this district, and in view of the fact that the subject has been under serious consideration for some years, it seems hardly necessary for me to present any new arguments in favor of new buildings in Ward Two, except to say that the increase of school population, as indicated by the school census, makes the case more urgent than it has been heretofore. Tem- porary arrangements have been made for the children by the opening of schools in Independent Hall, in the Eberle Building, in the Avon, -a brick block on Somerville Avenue, near Med- ford Street, -and by putting extra seats in the Prospect Hill School-rooms, and providing assistants in three of the rooms. Instruction under such circumstances is very inconvenient, and the results are necessarily unsatisfactory. The Bell School has been enlarged by the fitting up of a new room in the basement.
Winter Hill District .- In the Forster School, the first grade is so crowded that additional furniture had to be put in and an assistant appointed.
Spring Hill District .- The Franklin, Harvard, Beech Street, and Spring Hill buildings are in very poor condition and inade- quate to the needs of the district. Except during the inclement season, or when contagious diseases have prevailed, the rooms have been filled to their utmost capacity. It has become neces- sary to open two new schools in the basement of the Morse School-house to accommodate new classes.
West Somerville District is still lacking in seating capacity, the overflow classes of the Highland School being accommodated in two stores on Elm Street.
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ANNUAL REPORTS.
NEW BUILDINGS.
The erection of new school buildings should demand the seri- ous consideration of the City Government during the coming year. The condition of the Prospect-Hill, Brastow, Jackson, Bennett, Webster, Union, Franklin, Harvard, Beech-Street, Spring-Hill, and Cedar-Street buildings is well known to the School Commit- tee and the citizens. The number, location, size, and arrange- ments of these school-houses make it very difficult to accomplish the best results. It is doubtful in my mind whether the sanitary requirements are complied with; the cost of maintaining them is greater than it should be ; they require a great expenditure of time for supervision ; and it is difficult, and perhaps almost im- possible to exert through them the elevating and upbuilding influence that should emanate from every school centre.
It should be the policy of the School Committee to establish new schools in healthful and convenient localities, where the sur- roundings would contribute to the moral development of the children, where noise and clatter of travel and business which dis- tract the attention of the children and rack the nerves of the teachers, may be as far removed as possible, and where all classes may conveniently assemble for equal advantages of instruction and training, so that the children of the poor may, by asso- ciation, feel the influence of the culture and refinement of the more fortunate. The only way to make the whole community better is to bring the lower up to the average of the higher. This is the spirit of the common-school system. This is the underlying principle of all our American institutions. The school and the school-house should be higher, or at least as high, in character as the community in which it is located, if it is to exert the influence and accomplish the results for which it is intended. These school-houses should be larger than our old ones, that greater numbers may be accommodated under one roof. The cost of the schools per pupil will thus be greatly lessened. We will need a less number of principals, janitors, furnaces, text- books, and it will require less time for the superintendent and the music, drawing, and sewing teachers to make their visits of inspection and instruction. It will also be much easier to grade the schools and keep the instruction up to the standard. There
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REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS.
is, of course, an advantage in having small schools for little chil- dren near their homes, but our districts are becoming so compact that there are now no great distances for any children to travel. To be more specific, I would locate a school in the Prospect-Hill district that would accommodate the children belonging to the Prospect-Hill, Brastow, Bennett, and Jackson schools and the Somerville-Avenue Kindergarten ; another near Concord Square for all that now attend the Webster, Union, Eberle Hall, Inde- pendent Hall, and some from the Bell and Prospect Hill ; another between Summer Street and Somerville Avenue, to take the pupils of the Beech Street, Franklin, Harvard, and possibly relieve the Morse and Cummings. I would like to have these located on high ground, built of brick, newly furnished, and as complete in every respect as the other new buildings erected during the last few years ; but they should be heated and venti- lated by the best system known in the United States.
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