USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Weymouth > Town annual report of Weymouth 1948 > Part 16
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During September, the pupil record cards at the E. B. Nevin School were examined and children listed in grades 3, 4, 5, and 6, who had failed to make average progress in their studies during the preceding school year. These children were taken in groups and were administered the Durrell- Sullivan Reading-Capacity and Reading-Achievement Tests. Their scores were studied in relation to the scores attained in mental tests given pre- viously. If no mental age had been determined previously, a Stanford- Binet Intelligence Examination was given. Those children with the great- est difference between mental ability or capacity and reading achievement were the first considered for the remedial reading class; then were chosen those children who were reading at a level five months or more below their grade level.
Children with similar levels of acomplishment were grouped together for instruction. There are at present fifty children receiving extra help. They meet daily in groups of from six to eight in a special classroom for forty minutes of instruction. Of these fifty children, fifteen are transfers from other towns or other states where little or no formal train- ing has been given in the mastery of word-analysis skills. No child is permanently assigned to any one group. Some children show rapid growth and are transferred to another level. Before the year is over some will be dropped from the class altogether.
An attempt has been made to analyze the difficulties of each child, to determine his confusions and faulty habits, and then to formulate a program aimed to correct these disabilities.
The program takes care of:
1. Motivation.
a. Choosing purposeful reading material where the word-recognition and word-meaning burden is not too great.
b. Providing a variety of types of lessons to maintain interest and attention.
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c. Showing by means of graphs and charts the child's increased power in recognizing new words, the development of speed and fluency, the addition of new words to his vocabulary, etc.
d. Constantly encouraging the child.
2. Exercises on various levels to develop power of word recognition and word analysis.
3. Oral reading habits and skills.
4. Silent reading habits and skills.
5. Oral and written recall.
6. Study skills which include reading for information, evaluation, and criticism.
Since spelling and reading abilities are closely allied, spelling has been correlated with the reading. Exercises are provided to overcome meaning difficulties, visual difficulties, and auditory difficulties. The words learned are immediately transferred to dictated sentences. Regular class lists of words are used in most of the groups.
Because the children transferred to our system have, in most cases, come from schools where no formal arithmetic is taught in the lower grades, some work is being attempted in arithmetic. At present we are trying to master the fundamental facts in the four processes.
Time does not permit doing all that can be done to help those who, because they are slow learners, find it difficult to keep up with their classes. If each child can be helped to gain confidence in himself, enabled to experience satisfaction of achievement at his own level, and to have in- stilled in him a desire to learn, the program is well worth while."
12. Home Instruction for Physically Handicapped Children
"Twenty different children have been enrolled in the class this year, from January fifth to December twenty-third, forty weeks of school. The program of instruction calls for three one-hour lessons a week for each child, but the class was so large at one time in April that the lessons were only three quarters of an hour long. Two pupils in the third grade, doing the same work, had their lessons together on pleasant days. Three others, one a high school pupil and two retarded, had two lessons a week. Even then it was a very full program and only possible because the upper grade pupils could do much of their work alone.
In June, eleven of the class were promoted, two on trial, three con- ditioned and one incomplete. Ten children returned to school, one :n March and nine in September, although in several cases it was doubtful if they were physically able to do so.
A large variety of ailments characterized this class: three had rheumatic fever; two, nephritis; two, heart trouble; two, retarded; two. broken legs (one requiring amputation); two, anemia; and one each of asthma, epilepsy, osteomyelitis, polio, and spastic paralysis.
This work is like teaching an ungraded school, with so much to do and so little time to do it. If it were not for the whole-hearted co- - operation of the parents, it would be difficult indeed. They as well as the children deserve a great deal of credit. It means a lot to a child to be with his friends and school mates. The way they all work to keep up
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their grades shows how they value that association. They have been successful in many cases that seemed almost impossible because so much time had been lost in sickness or hospitalization."
13. Agriculture
"The opening of school in September, 1948 showed a total enrollment of 43 students divided according to classes as follows:
Seniors
7
Sophomores 13
Juniors
9
Freshmen 14
The 43 students again may be geographically divided as follows:
East Weymouth
12
Quincy 3
South Weymouth
12
Scituate
1
North Weymouth
11
Hanover
1
Weymouth
3
The following table will show the amount of labor and the value re- ceived for work done for the past five years:
School
Hours of Labor
Value Received
Year
Boys Reporting
Total
Average Per Boy
Total
Average Per Boy
Value per Hour
1943-44
39
39,007
1,000
$16,277.55
$417.37
41¢
1944-45
33
36,988
1,120
15,752.16
477.33
42¢
1945-46
34
36,155
1,063
15,214.42
447.48
42¢
1946-47
37
38,802
1,048
17,654.19
477.28
45¢
1947-48
38*
43,514
1,145
19,359.52
509.46
44¢
The 38 boys mentioned above (*) worked on sixteen farms or agricul- tural enterprises in Weymouth, eight in Vermont (Barnet, White River Junction, Peacham, East Peacham, Wilmington, West Brattleboro, South Royalton, East Montpelier), four in New Hampshire (Walpole 2, Westmore- land Depot, Bradford), two in Hingham, two in Walpole at our main school, one in each of the following: Rockland, Holbrook, Hanover, North Marsh- field, Bridgewater, and one in Canaseraga, New York, representing 12 dairy farms, 8 poultry farms, 5 greenhouses, 5 general farms, 4 landscape con- tractors, one dairy and general farm, one greenskeeper, one food prepara- tion, and one animal hospital."
14. High School Library
"The relocation of the library on the second floor in the center of the school is the most outstanding change of the year. The twelve fluorescent lights, six large windows, new asphalt tile floor, and light paint have made the library much more pleasant and usable.
Three hundred students and teachers attended the third annual Open House of the library. Miss Esther Benson of the Home Economics Depart- ment and her classes made and served the refreshments. Miss Evelyn Silvester of the Art Department supervised the decorations. Many hobbies were displayed - dolls, coins, stamps, miniatures, fans. Mr. John Ghiorse took pictures of the activities, which were printed in the Quincy Patriot Ledger. Exhibits during the year have been enjoyed from the Children's Museum, Jamaica Plain, and the Fine Arts Museum, Boston.
Members of the Library staff were invited to the Braintree library for a social afternoon. They enjoyed a lecture given by an exchange teacher
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from Scotland. The Weymouth High School girls talked with girls from other schools on the South Shore. After visiting other systems, the girls realized the advantages of the Weymouth High School Library.
Library lessons for freshman classes have continued and special classes for upper-classmen have been added.
There were 198 books acquired this year, making the total books in the library 4,612. 1
Circulation records through the years have been:
1929 - 4,050 1935 - 6,817
1940 - 6,780 1948 - 9,990"
15. Evening School
"Registration for adult evening classes, which was held on September 23, 1948, indicated that there is renewed interest in such work. Altogether four hundred and one registrants signed for the various courses.
A breakdown of these into the various classifications presents the fol- lowing figures:
Business Subjects 90
Industrial Arts 39
Clothing 105
Tray Painting 65
Foods 24
Rug Hooking 78
Since the classes are limited by the State, waiting lists must be created. From these waiting lists, candidates are chosen in their proper sequence to fill any vacancies which occur during the year.
The turnover in most classes is rapid enough to accommodate many on the waiting list. The exception to this may be found in Tray Paint- ing. To accommodate people who desire to paint, a class in related work, fabric painting for example, offers a satisfactory solution.
Since these classes will undoubtedly be continued, I would recommend the purchase of two cutting machines to be used in the Rug Hooking classes. A suitable filing cabinet for Evening School records and materials should also be obtained."
THE NECESSARY SERVICES IN A LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEM WHICH AID IN THE ADJUSTMENT OF THE SCHOOL CHILD
I. Adequate Program of Group Tests and Measurements
II. Provision for Individual Testing of Pupils who deviate too far from the norm
III. Adequate Counseling Services - Vocational, Educational and Social- based on a good cumulative record system, especially at junior and senior high levels
IV. Attendance Service, to work with home in correcting causes of non-attendance and to improve home-school relationships
V. School Nurse and Health Services - educational and preventive program - also, a liaison between school and home
.
VI. Remedial Reading Service - perhaps number one educational need, in order that poor readers may be detected and helped as early in school career as possible
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VII. Special Classes for Handicapped Children*
1. Slow Learning Children
2. Sight Saving
3. Lip Reading, for hard-of-hearing children
4. Speech Correction
5. Crippled Children
6. Home-bound Children
*To warrant the establishment of special classes, a suf- ficient number of handicapped children of any type must live in a community.
One of the soundest criticisms that can be made of the average public school is that due to the large size of most classes the program is on a mass production basis with not enough attention given to the needs of the individual child. Perhaps this is not too serious a lack in the case of the great majority of average, normal, healthy children, but certainly for the pupil who deviates from the norm, the school should have the means to determine his needs and to make the necessary adjustments in his program.
The Weymouth schools have made considerable progress in the last five or six years in the amount and quality of special services available, and we should anticipate a further extension and improvement of these services in the next few years. The establishment of an excellent guidance department in the High School and the extension of guidance work to the seventh and eighth grades have improved our testing and counseling services. The appointment of a full-time, competent attendance supervisor and the addition of a second elementary school nurse have done much to improve home-school relationships and to increase the time and at- tention that can be given to those pupils who are making unsatisfactory school adjustment. The provision of a remedial reading instructor, who has been assigned to one section of the town for a school year and then transferred to another section the next year, has meant that some of the pupils most in need of remedial instruction have been helped. The employment of a full-time instructor for home-bound children has made it possible to keep pupils up to grade who must necessarily be absent from school for long periods of time while recuperating from polio, rheumatic fever, and other afflictions. Also, this teacher brings a ray of hope and inspiration to those unfortunate children who may never return to school.
The Weymouth schools have two long-established special services which have been carried on successfully over a long period of years; viz., the excellent special classes for slow-learning elementary children which are located in the High School Building, and the extensive program of group testing of elementary pupils conducted by the Director of Courses of study.
A careful analysis indicates that the next extension of our special services should be: (1) the provision of additional remedial reading in- structors; (2) an assistant for the Director of Courses of Study to carry on the testing program and assist in other phases of her work. The ser- vices of one teacher are wholly inadequate to care effectively for the many pupils needing remedial reading and other subjects in our widely scattered and rapidly growing elementary schools. The title, Director of Courses of Study for Elementary Schools, has been used in Weymouth to designate a position that includes three distinct functions: (1) the general supervision of instruction; (2) the leadership and coordination of course
201
of study construction; (3) the administration, correction, and interpreta- tion of locally constructed tests and of standardized group intelligence and achievement tests. As our elementary enrollment continues to in- crease, one individual will find it increasingly difficult to carry out properly the threefold duties of the position.
More or less simultaneously with these additions to our special services staff, provision should be made for an increase in our supervisory and teaching staff in the special subject fields. The 1949 budget provides for a second instructor in physical education for high school girls. There were two women physical education teachers in the high school until 1943, but since the granting of a leave of absence to a teacher at that time the department has carried on with one instructor. Increased enroll- ments and the expansion of the instrumental music program will soon necessitate an additional music supervisor (or teacher). At a later date another supervisor of art will undoubtedly be needed. Even with the meagre program now being offered, the pupil load of the teachers of manual arts and domestic arts in the seventh and eighth grades is large. One instructor at the high school is responsible for the planning and supervision of the audio-visual aids program in the high school and elementary schools, and the driver education program in the high school, in addition to teaching one course in English. Obviously his time is being . spread too thinly in too many fields, and he should be freed at least from teaching the English course, and his work in audio-visual aids recog- nized by an appropriate supervisory title.
CHANGES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL
Periodically any institution should reexamine its aims or objectives and its offerings in the light of changing economic and social conditions to determine if it is going in the right directon. The high school teach- ing force is now engaged in such a task. Based on the common background of a course given at the High School last year by Professor Roy O. Billett, of Boston University, entitled "Improving Secondary Education," in which eighty per cent of the High School staff was enrolled, the teachers, or- ganized in departments under the leadership of the department heads recently appointed by the School Committee, are appraising the present program of studies and the content of the various courses with a view to recommending a possible revamping of the high school program. They may decide after their departmental findings are combined in a composite report under the direction of the principal that for a staid New England community our present offerings need only minor changes; or they may well recommend that for life in the rapidly moving age of automatic machinery (with atomic energy just around the corner) more far-reaching revisions, deletions, and additions in our courses and methods are in order. Whatever the decision, the probing, thinking, and deciding necessitated by the study should result in the professional improvement of those teach- ers who take an active part in the study.
MAJOR REPAIRS AND IMPROVEMENTS
Pupils returning to the High School this fall found a completely renovated, newly furnished science department with all science rooms located together on the third floor of the original building. The class- rooms and laboratories are fully modernized. They should be visited to appreciate the transformation from the previously dark, dingy rooms in the fifty-two-year-old building to the bright, well-lighted, up-to-date classrooms that have resulted from the special appropriation made at the 1948 Town Meeting also, the library is relocated, on the second floor in the center of the school where it is easily accessible from all parts of the
202
building. The new room is thoroughly modernized with asphalt tile floors, a new ceiling, and fluorescent lights.
All of the above work was planned, engineered, and supervised by the regular members of the School Department staff and the mainten- ance crew. It was necessary to employ extra carpenters; and the plumb- ing work and the laying of asphalt tile floors were done by outside con- tractors. The appropriation for this job was $36,300.00; and a balance of $428.87 has been returned to the Excess and Deficiency Fund.
An appropriation of $6,500.00 was made at the 1948 Town Meeting for the waterproofing and repointing of the gymnasium wing of the Nevin School. An engineer's report indicated that a major cause of the leaks was the existence of "soft" or porous bricks in the side walls and faulty construction over the windows. As a result, instead of repointing and waterproofing, the walls on each side of the gymnasium above the bleacher projections were refaced, using new hard brick. The roof also was re- paired. The work has remedied the most serious leaks in the building. There are other areas that should have the same treatment, and the balance of $1,917.45 in this account will be used in 1949 to finish the work. It is hoped that this wing will then be free from leaks.
'The 1948 budget included the sum of $16,525.00 for construction by the pupils of a much needed carpentry shop, to be located in a separate building adjacent to the west end of the Vocational School. The weather and the diversion of the boys' time to other work delayed the initiation of this project so that very little progress was made until the fall term of school. A balance of $9,415.49 from the appropriation is being returned to the Town Treasury. The School Committee is requesting that a like sum, plus $5,400.00 for the construction of an eight-stall garage abutting the west side of the carpentry shop, be appropriated in a special article at the 1949 Town Meeting for the completion of the job.
Another special article. for the Annual Town Meeting requests the appropriation of $5,500.00 for the erection of new stairways, to be en- closed in stairwells, at either end of the Washington School. These new stairs would replace the hazardous original stairs in this sixty-two-year- cld building. The present stairs are located back to back in the center of the building, and the basement stairs below them lead directly to the boiler room.
The new budget includes provision for an extensive program of repairs and improvements. Some of the more sizable are: the renovation of the heating and ventilating systems at the Athens School, the remodeling of the second-floor Athens auditorium into two classrooms, the purchase of 253 new pupil desk units to take care of the increased enrollment in the elementary schools, a new boiler at the Pond School, a stoker for the Hunt School (which will mean that all schools will be equipped with stokers or oil burners, except the two-room John Adams School), a new hot water heating system at the High School, the installation of fluorescent light fixtures in five classrooms at the High School, the surfacing or resurfacing of driveways at the High, Humphrey, and Hunt Schools, and at Legion Memorial Field, and the erection of a fence enclosing a portion of the playground in the rear of the Nevin School.
The cost of the maintenance program in the postwar years appears large when compared with prewar expenditures. It should be pointed out that the list of items planned for 1949, which it is estimated will cost about $52,000.00 (not including the salaries of regular maintenance work- ers), were selected from a total list of essential or desirable repairs and improvements totaling $130,000.00. In other words, work which it is es- timated will cost approximately $78,000.00 has been deferred to future years.
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One project which the School Committee decided should be given priority in 1950 is the renovation and the refurnishing of the Home Economics Foods Room.
BUDGET
The estimates for the 1949 budget, together with the estimated receipts which are paid to the town treasury because of the schools, are listed on page 182 in the Report of the School Committee. An accurate, carefully developed budget is considered an essential of good school administration for obvious reasons. A well planned budget also becomes a guide to expenditures all through the fiscal year. Major decisions af- fecting the educational and maintenance programs are made during the two or three months spent in its preparation, and these decisions to a large extent determine the improvements in the schools during the en- suing year.
The budget for 1949 has been set up on the basis of our state reports. This budgetary and accounting form is used nationwide, with minor adjustments in the various states. The standardized accounting system will simplify the making of state and federal reports. Perhaps the greatest advantage in the new system is the classification of accounts under major functional headings which show clearly the purposes for which funds are appropriated.
The budget shows an increase of 7.5% over the funds available for expenditures in our regular 1948 budget. The major causes for this in- crease are as follows:
(1) increases in the account for teachers' salaries due to the reasons listed below:
(a) to finance the revised salary schedule which raises minimum salaries $400.00 and maximum salaries $200.00 on April 1, 1949
(b) to provide funds for the new positions which were needed because of increased enrollment in September 1948; and for stepup increases in September 1948 for twelve months rather than for four months
(c) to make provision for increases granted to newly appointed department heads in the High School, effective January 1, 1949
(d) to provide funds for ten new teaching positions and the step- up increases on September 1, 1949.
(2) the increased cost of textbooks and the necessity for furnishing new books and supplies for increased enrollment
(3) the higher cost of fuel
(4) a larger allowance for maintenance, as explained above
(5) the necessity for furnishing new classroom furniture for the rapidly growing elementary enrollment, as noted above.
The need for increasing teachers' salaries on the lower steps of the salary schedule was pointed out in last year's annual report. The need is even greater this year, if we are to compete successfully with neighbor- ing cities and towns in securing competent, qualified teachers, especially in the primary grades. The budget provides for nine additional elemen- tary teachers for September 1949 to teach the nine new classes that we plan to organize to take care of increased enrollments, to say nothing of probable replacements that undoubtedly will be needed. We have been
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actively seeking new teachers since late in the fall, and to date have found two who were elected to begin service in September 1949. A first-grade vacancy as of February 18 will absorb one of these. A general increase in teachers' salaries appears essential in order to staff our schools with capable, fully-qualified teachers.
CONCLUSION
The progress of the building program is described in the Building Committee report on page - -. The delay in the award of contracts for the construction of additions to the Abigail Adams and Pratt Schools will result in serious overcrowding in September. The emergency will be met by dividing the Athens School hall for classrooms, using the Bick- nell School hall for recitations, reopening the Center School, and by pressing into service basement rooms in the Jefferson, Hunt, Pratt, and Pond Schools, most of which are unsatisfactory for classroom purposes. The building of new school facilities in the next few years must be speeded up, if we are to avoid double sessions in some parts of the town.
The Weymouth schools have completed another year of service to the youth of the community. We hope that some progress and improvement have been made in these services. To the teaching and supervising staff who are responsible for the everyday work in the classroom goes my appreciation for the hard work and conscientious devotion to duty, with- out which progress in our schools would be impossible. To the School Committee go my thanks for friendly support and counsel in the solution of the many problems which face all school governing bodies today. And finally, to my office staff I express my deepest appreciation for long hours of loyal and efficient service.
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