USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Weymouth > Town annual report of Weymouth 1957 > Part 29
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In September, 1958, ten classes from the Johnson, Athens and Adams Schools will be transported to the Washington and Jefferson Schools and
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six classes will be on double sessions at the Johnson School. The double sessions and the transfer of pupils to the East Weymouth schools will continue throughout the school year 1958-1959 and until the Green Street school is completed. One first grade class from the Jackson School dis- trict will be assigned to the old Washington School. Three classes from the Pond School district will be transported to the old Shaw building until the new addition is finished. About 55 overflow pupils from the Ralph Talbot district will be transported to the new Thomas V. Nash, Jr. School.
The erection of a new parochial school in St. Francis Xavier parish in South Weymouth, as is now planned, should obviate the need for an ad- dition to the Ralph Talbot School which otherwise would have been necessary in the next year or two.
With the completion of the elementary school projects listed above, sixteen in all, our immediate elementary school building needs should be met. This could be true for many years to come if a larger parochial school in Sacred Heart parish is erected, and if we keep the old frame Washington, Jefferson, Shaw and John Adams Schools in use for overflow enrollments in various parts of the town.
A milestone in meeting Weymouth's secondary school building needs was reached in the following votes of the November Special Town Meeting : (1) to purchase a site for a new North High School and Vocational School (2) to purchase a site for a new South High School, (3) to authorize the appointment of a Building Committee for the North High School and Vocational School. In September, the School Commitee adopted the recommendations of the Citizens' Advisory Committee which included in addition to the two new high schools, the remodeling of the present High School building as a fourth Junior High School, and the con- struction of an addition to the South Junior High School not later than 1961.
Tables included in the brochure for the November Special Town Meeting showing the estimated annual costs and the effect on annual tax rates of the Elementary and Junior High building program and of the proposed High School and Junior High building program are includ- ed on pages 370-371-372 of the report for the information of all taxpayers and citizens in general.
The Future Supply of Teachers and Teachers' Salaries
It is undoubtedly true that any community has as good or as mediocre schools as it wants and as it is willing to pay for. The standards of a school system and the effectiveness of its program depend on many fac- tors. Most people would agree that the most important factor is the quali- ty of the teaching and supervisory staff. In order to retain excellent teachers and to recruit well-qualified, competent new teachers in this ex- tremely competitive period, it is essential that a community pay relatively high salaries. It obviously follows that the school system that has ade- quate financial support and a good teachers' salary schedule will secure and keep excellent teachers, and that the highly competent teaching staff if properly guided, stimulated, and encouraged, will produce a school sys- tem of high standards and an effective program. Furthermore, once the school system has obtained high standards the very quality of its program will attract well-qualified and able teachers, thus making the results of good financial support a cumulative force over a period of years. Con- versely, the school system that is inadequately supported over a number
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of years will find all these forces working in reverse, making it difficult to hold and recruit competent teachers and eventually, no matter how good the system may have been at one time, low standards and an in- effective school program will result.
Sensing the essential truth of the statements above, the Weymouth School Committee in the post-war years has attempted to keep our salary schedule for teachers at least abreast of the higher salary scales which have been paid in each successive year in the various towns and cities in the Boston Metropolitan area. In this period of extreme teacher scarcity caused by rapidly rising school enrollments and the relatively more at- tractive monetary rewards of other fields of work, it has been absolutely imperative that a community keep pace with its neighbors if it expected to have its schools staffed with capable, contented teachers.
Weymouth's task in this respect was made doubly difficult because of the need for increasing the size of the teaching staff each year as well as replacing those teachers who resigned for various reasons. The following statistics for the last three years in regard to the new teachers employed in Weymouth to begin their services in September shows the extent of the problem which we have faced in maintaining the calibre of our teach- ing staff:
1955
1956
1957
High School and Vocational
3
9
7
Junior High
26
16
20
Elementary
42
44
44
Supervisors
3
1
Totals
71
72
72
Additional positions
30
31
17
Replacements
41
41
55
New Teachers Classified as to Experience
1955
1956
1957
High School, Vocational, Junior High, and
Supervisors:
Experienced
20
22
17
Beginners
9
6
11
Elementary :
Experienced
12
21
7
Beginners
30
23
37
Total Experienced
32
43
24
Total Beginners
39
29
48
-
-
It will be noted that in 1957, due undoubtedly to the fact that the in- crease in our salary schedule was lower than in many communities in the Boston area, the number of teachers needed to replace those who left was 14 higher than in either of the two previous years. Also, note that in filling these positions, it was necessary to employ many more beginning teachers than in the two previous years.
With these facts in mind, and with the knowledge that surrounding cities and towns were again raising salary schedules for 1958, the School Committee on December 3rd voted unanimously to increase minimum salaries $350 and maximum salaries $400 effective September 1st, 1958. The maximum will be reached in three annual increments of $200 and nine annual increments of $150. (See the revised salary schedule on page 353.
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The salary levels paid Weymouth teachers in future years must be kept at a level comparable to the whole metropolitan area if we expect to re- tain our top-notch teachers and if we are to continue to recruit fully pre- pared, experienced and capable teachers for our growing high school and junior high school enrollments, as well as for the growth and replacement needs in the elementary schools.
How Weymouth's average salaries have compared in the last sixteen vears with the average salaries in the State is shown in the table below. Can anyone seriously believe that Weymouth is overpaying its teachers when the average annual salary is only $18.00 higher than the State aver- age?
State Average Teachers' Salaries and Weymouth Average Teachers' Salaries Compared 1941-1957
School Year
School Year
1941-1942
State
$229 higher
1949-1950
State
$ 39 higher
1942-1943
State
140
1950-1951
Weymouth
10
1943-1944
Weymouth
29
",
1951-1952
Weymouth
41
1944-1945
Weymouth
38
1952-1953
Weymouth
66
1945-1946
State
45
"
1953-1954
Weymouth
126
1946-1947
State
66
1954-1955
Weymouth
63
1947-1948
Weymouth
6
1955-1956
Weymouth
17
"
1948-1949
State
93
„
1956-1957
Weymouth
18
„
The 1958 School Budget
A great deal of time is spent each year in compiling and assembling the necessary information and data for the School Committee's considera- tion in determining the financial needs for our rapidly growing school system. Each division of the Budget is given careful analysis and study. The many hours of work that go into the preparation of a detailed budget are necessary if the essential needs of our schools for a twelve-month period, extending over two school years, are to be adequately provided for.
The appropriation required is 10.8 per cent greater than in 1957. This is one of the smallest increases percentwise in in eight years, and the smallest in dollars in three years. As has been true in nearly every post- war vear, approximately 80 per cent of the increase is in salaries. The predicted increase in enrollment for the school year 1958-1959 over 1957- 1958 is some 350 greater than for 1957-1958 over 1956-1957.
Our cost per pupil for current day school expenditures continues low among the large communities of the State. Of the fifty-four cities and towns in Massachusetts with a population of 20,000 or more, only eleven have a lower per pupil cost than Weymouth, and three of these are only $2.00 lower per pupil. Seven of the eleven are industrial cities: New Bed- ford, Fall River, Attleboro, Brockton, Haverhill, Gardner, and Chicopee.
The estimated cost of the higher teachers' salary schedule from Sep- tember through December 1958 is $55,133, and the cost of the general in- crease effective in September 1957 from January through August 1958 is $53.212. making the total cost of the higher schedules in the 1958 budget, $108,345. The estimated costs of step-up increases, etc. is $38,238. In- creased costs for twelve months for special payments such as: sick leave sabbatical leave, military service retirement assessments, coaching, cadet program, driver education, double sessions, etc., total $10,731. The esti-
337
mated costs for additional teaching positions, 17 in September 1957 and 15 in September 1958, is $57,142. The total increase in the instructional salary budget as outlined above, excluding vocational teachers is $214,456. The vocational school instructional salary budget shows an increase of $4,728.
The 1958 Budget estimates for other personnel in administrative, sec- retarial, nurses, custodians, and maintenance men show an increase of $18,912 over the 1957 Budget.
The budget estimates for 1958 for maintenance and capital outlay, including replacement of equipment and new equipment, but excluding salaries, is $18,765 more than expended in 1957. A sufficient expenditure each year to keep buildings in good repair is economy in the long run. If the instructional and maintenance programs are to function properly and efficiently, it is also necessary to purchase a certain amount of equip- ment each year.
Federal funds received in 1956 under Public Law 874 in the amount of $67,830.43 were expended in 1957 for maintenance and capital outlay. This amount was deducted from the 1957 Budget when the school appro- priation was made in March 1957. During 1957 $113,506.69 in Federal funds were received. This amount can be used to reduce the 1958 school appropriation. This Federal money by State law is available for expendi- ture for school purposes without re-appropriation by the Town Meeting.
Science and Mathematics in the Schools
A sudden burst of interest and concern about the extent and quality of the mathematics and science program in our schools and colleges has been evidenced since the launching of "Sputniks I and II" by the U.S.S.R. Many people seem to think that in ten months changes and improvements can be made, changes that they should have been concerned about ten or twenty years ago, because that was the time that our scientists, who are now working on missiles and all the other advances of the atomic age, were in high school. It undoubtedly has been twenty to thirty years since most scientists in Russia who worked on the space satellite were in high school. Probably much of the credit for Russia's present-day scientific achievements can go to the prestige and salaries given to scientists in Russian society. They appear to enjoy the esteem, the veneration and the financial rewards which we reserve for movie actors, star athletes, and top business executives.
There is great cause for concern. Russia is now spending twice as much of its national income for education as is the United States. If this wide disparity in relative expenditures for education continues for another ten or twenty years, it is easy to imagine what it will do to our relative scientific and industrial progress. In the new Russian educational system, teachers are not paid less than bricklayers and plumbers and the average class size is 17, not 30 or 35. This means that no one is elbowed out of classroom experiments, and no urge for research and discovery on the part of the student is frustrated because of too many students per test tube or Bunsen burner.
Teachers' salaries and class sizes determine at least 80 per cent of the cost of educating a pupil. If America plans to excel Soviet Russia in the decades ahead, it will have to do more than provide scholarships for col- lege students, desirable as this proposal of the President may be; we must spend far more on our public schools, more than we do for liquor and
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cigarettes, and we must provide the high school and college facilities to take care of the great growth that is coming in enrollments.
Furthermore, if our adult society could be sufficiently aroused from its complacency to give the "egghead" and the scientist the honored posi- tion they deserve in our society, perhaps students in high school and college would give the honor student the prestige now enjoyed by the athlete or the lead in the school play.
Much of the concern shown in recent months by speechmakers and columnists appears to be over quantity and not quality. Figures are quoted showing the high per cent of high school students who took courses in mathematics and science fifty or more years ago as compared to today. They ignore the fact that the high school then was usually strictly a college preparatory school with a selected student body made up of the book- minded and highly intelligent youth who composed perhaps 10 per cent of the high school age group. The other 90 per cent had gone to work at fourteen years of age or earlier. Today, 94 per cent of the pupils who were in Junior High Schoo three lyears earlier are in attendance in the Weymouth High School and the school is a comprehensive high school offering courses in commercial subjects, agriculture, home economics, auto mechanics, carpentry, printing, etc. Sixty per cent of the enrollment is in these courses and only forty per cent in the college preparatory courses. Even so, the number taking algebra, geometry, trigonometry, chemistry and physics would be far greater than in 1900. In the United States since 1900, the population has increased 100 per cent, but the high school science enrollment has increased 600 per cent and the enrollment in mathematics 900 per cent.
It would seem that the statistic to be concerned about is the percent- age of boys in the college course who are enrolled in courses in science and mathematics. The following are the numbers in Weymouth High School in October of this school year:
Seniors
Juniors
Sophomores
Number of Boys in College Course
68
117
179
Number taking Physics
61
Number taking Biology
32
Number taking Trigonometry
54
Number taking Chemistry
115
Number taking Algebra II
115
Number taking Plane Geometry
175
-
-
-
-
In addition, many other students, including girls in the college course and boys and girls in the general course, are taking these subjects, for example in addition to the 61 college course boys, 32 other students are taking physics.
Even more than numbers, we should be concerned with the quality of these courses, viz., the competency of the instructors and the standards they set, together with the interest of the students, the amount of study- ing they do, and how much they have learned at the completion of a course, and how well they succeed in college.
The general standards and climate for scholarship which a school has established over a period of years is important. It can set the stage for high accomplishment, but in any given year in a particular class the fol- lowing factors are all important: a well-qualified, skillful teacher; a me- dium-sized class, well grounded in any essential pre-requisite courses; and
339
for science, a well-equipped classroom and laboratory. In 1958 if va- cancies occur (in 1957 we had nine resignations in these fields to accept better paying positions) or if it is necessary to add a teacher for increased enrollments, it will be difficult to find well-qualified, experienced and competent instructors in science or mathematics in a scarce market at our salary levels. In 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 and until a new high school is completed, classes in science have been and will be too large for high achievement.
In summary, this all means that if in future years the Weymouth Schools, along with all the other school systems in this great rich country of ours, are to do the job expected of them and if we as a country are to equal and excel the Soviets in the greatest competitive race of all times, more support must be forthcoming for our public schools which have been one of the big contributing factors in creating the greatest, the most productive, and the most democratic nation the world has ever known.
Conclusion
The rapid growth of the school system in the last ten years has pro- duced many problems which pressed for decision. The proper solution of these problems, together with the need for maintaining the high stand- ards of our schools during this period of expansion, has meant long hours of work for everyone connected with the Weymouth Schools. We hope progress has been made in the improvement of our instructional program guided and directed by competent principals, supervisors, and directors. The Weymouth Schools are staffed by capable, conscientious, and enthu- siastic teachers who deserve all the credit due them in their all-important job of molding the minds and characters of the citizens of tomorrow.
To the office staff, I wish to express my thanks for their whole-hearted cooperation throughout the year. To the School Committee, I extend ap- preciation for the many hours they selflessly give to the numerous prob- lems confronting our schools in this critical period.
Respectfully submitted, ELMER STEPHENS MAPES Superintendent of Schools
SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUM CONSTRUCTION REPORT OF FLORA H. MCGRATH Director of Instruction
As a result of startling developments in science, the thinking segment of our society is taking a long and thoughtful look at the public schools of America. They are learning that to educate all of the children of all of the people calls for a very different approach from that needed for the education of only the accelerated. There is a tendency today to compare our schools with those of Europe and of Russia where less than 5 per cent of those entering grade one ever reach grade twelve, and where those who do not meet the academic requirements are streamed into labor and industry. As more than 80 per cent of our children entering grade one complete grade twelve, it means that an entirely different approach and program are necessary in order to have each work up to the limit of his capacity. It is the need to meet this difference that keeps us constantly in search of better solutions to our public school problems.
340
In this search for better ways of helping children to learn and to grow, we use many approaches. A testing program which helps to give a picture of the mental capacity of each child, the constant study and re- vision of our courses of study, and the dissemination of those methods of teaching which have been found valuable, have all become vital functions of public school services.
TESTING PROGRAM
Mental Ability Test
No better guide than the mental ability test has yet been found for aid in the study and placement of pupils. While they are not infallible, the results of these tests plus the judgment of the teacher are invaluable in determining the pupil's learning capacity.
All pupils in grades I, IV, and VI were given the Pintner-Cunninghamn and Pintner-Durost tests during the year, and the results were studied and recorded.
Individual Testing ... Stanford-Binet ,
Wherever there is a question as to the reliability of the results of the group test, or in cases where children are suspected of being mentally retarded, the Stanford-Binet is given individually. This is the test re- quired by the Massachusetts Department of Education. It is expected however, that the Wechsler-Bellevue may eventually replace this for in- dividual testing.
Achievement Testing
Reading
IOWA SILENT READING TEST GRADE VI . JANUARY 1957
Number tested 696
Number reading at or above grade level 452
Number reading at high school and college level 93
Reading range from grade 2.3 to 14.8
IOWA SILENT READING TEST . . GRADE VI . . OCTOBER 1957
Number tested 925
Number reading at or above grade level 632
Number reading at high school and college level 107 Reading range from grade 3.4 to grade 14.8
Approximately 67 per cent of all pupils tested in grade VI 1956-1957 class and grade VI 1957-1958 class were reading at or above grade level.
Reading and Phonics Survey
During March, a reading and phonics survey was made in grade III in which 994 pupils participated.
STANFORD ACHIEVEMENT TEST
The partial battery of the Stanford Achievement test was administered in grade III in May and again to the incoming third grade in October. All results were tabulated and remedial work recommended where it was found necessary.
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ENGLISH . GRADES VII and VIII
During February and March all pupils in grades VII and VIII were given an English test which included both grammar and essay writing. All tests were individually scored and returned. A complete record of the 1400 tests given is on file in this office. The results were unusually satis- factory.
COURSES OF STUDY
A complete revision of the Course of Study for grade II has been com- pleted and is in the hands of the teachers. The third grade Course of Study has also been revised and will be edited in 1958. In addition, a separate book on phonics has been completed and will be edited in 1958. The revision of the Character Education outline has been partially com- pleted.
REMEDIAL READING
The work of six remedial reading teachers now being conducted in nine schools continues to be of valuable help to those children with read- ing difficulties.
Total Number
of Remedial Number of Number of Number of 1956-1957 class discharged Reading Pupils Boys Girls Reached mental level or grade level 333 258 75 65
The following causes of reading failure have been listed by the teachers:
Mental Immaturity in grade I (entered at 5.8 or (younger) 87 Excessive absence in grade I (25 days or more) 62
Transfers from out of town or frequent moving 62 Other causes (mentally retarded, physical factors, emotional disturbances, and questionable home conditions) 122
At the end of each school year those who reach their grade level or their mental level are discharged.
COMMUNITY STIMULATED PROJECTS
The teachers and principals are glad to cooperate in any program or contest sponsored by the local clubs or town departments which contribute to the growth and development of children. This year the poster and es- say contest on fire prevention and hazards conducted in all sixth grades under the direction of Chief Walter R. Murray and his excellent staff helped to make children more aware of fire hazards. It is considered a necessary and excellent project.
The traffic safety program conducted by Safety Officer William Riley under the direction of Chief Joseph B. O'Kane makes a lasting impression on the children and frequent reference to what "the policeman said" is heard on the playground. In addition to this safety program, the Junior Chamber of Commerce presents to all first grade children free material on Safety Education which is used in the classroom.
Again this year, the pupils of grades VII and VIII participated in the history notebook and essay contest conducted by the D.A.R. Awards were presented to winners from the three junior high schools.
Under the auspices of the Women's Auxiliary of the V.F.W., the Southi Junior High School pupils participated in a 1000-word essay contest en-
342
titled "America's Crusade for Free Men's Rights." The winners were Carol Glynn, first prize; Barbara Belcher, second prize; and Francis Dou- cette, honorable mention.
In cooperation with the American Red Cross, the pupils from three schools make favors and fill baskets to be used on holidays for the Veterans' Hospitals. This project, though a minor one, helps to make these children aware of their duty to others.
Town Government Day sponsored by the Kiwanis Club for the first time this year met with much interest in grade VI. Each child did & project on some phase of town government or town service, which required making a closer study of those facts which all good citizens should know.
The annual essay contest sponsored by the Weymouth Rotary Club in which 706 pupils competed was won by Stephen Powers of the South Junior High School, and by Robert Lingley and Sandra Teed, both from the Central Junior High School. The subject this year was "Planning for Weymouth."
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