District school

“ Here, again, the consolidated school, with its attractive building, its improved equipment, its larger body of pupils, and its better teaching, appears as a solution of the difficulty. For it does what the present type of district school can never do—it makes school life interesting and attractive to its pupils, and this brings to bear upon them one of the strongest incentives to continue in school and secure an education. ”

“ School systems are becoming better. People realize the advantages of education. More and more young people are being sent to college. But as distances are gradually being overcome, schools should be administered wholly from the county seat. The County Unit plan does away with the local school district boards. This system equalizes burdens and advantages, minimizes dissension, and conduces to economy and efficiency. The average school board has no standards by which to judge an applicant for teaching. One disadvantage of the district system is that so often daughters are put in as teachers. ”

“ But the district school will, at best, [Pg 166] be only the social center of a neighborhood, and in many cases its district is too small for successful play or social life. Furthermore, the average one-room school is ill-adapted in architecture or equipment for social purposes. The consolidated school or village high school may well be made a social center as far as it is possible for it to so function and new schools should be, and are being, constructed with this in view. ”

“ FUNCTIONS.--The functions, or work, of the school are solely educational. The State supports a system of public schools in order that the masses of the people may be educated. The country needs good citizens: to be good citizens the people must be intelligent, and to be intelligent they must attend School.
MEMBERS.
The members of the school district are the people living in it. All are interested, one way or another, in the success of the school. In most States the legal voters elect the school board, or trustees, and in some States levy the district school taxes. ”

“ In a large number of the western states, however, and in a few of the eastern states, the district school persists in many rural communities, a relic of pioneer conditions. It is often felt that it is more democratic for each district to administer its own school, subject only to the laws of the state. ”

“ The common district school, supported jointly by local taxation and State subvention, gives elementary education to the children of all classes. As the towns grow the tendency to graft manual and technical courses upon the ordinary public school curriculum is unmistakably strong. ”

“ Each district school must be open at least three months each year, and children between the ages of eight and sixteen are required to attend either a public or a private school, unless excused because of physical or mental infirmity. There are separate schools for whites and negroes. In addition to instruction in the ordinary branches, the teaching in the district schools of the elementary principles of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, stock-feeding, forestry, building country roads and domestic science is required. ”

“ We always feel that we have given our children no small advantage by the mere fact of allowing them to go to these little district schools, where they all have the same treatment and are all tried by the same standard. But with us in the country the district school is only philanthropic in that excellent sense in which all joint effort for the common good is philanthropic. ”

“ The district assigns students to nonmagnet schools in one of two ways: Parents of kindergartners, first graders, and students new to the district may submit an application indicating a first and second choice among the schools within their cluster; students who do not submit such an application are assigned within the cluster by the district. "Decisions to assign students to schools within each cluster are based on available space within the schools and the racial guidelines in the District's current student assignment plan." ”

“ The purpose of the Governor's school programme was to give Ohio a co-ordinates system of State, county and district supervision, to require normal or college training of all teachers, and, above all, to pave the way for speedier centralization and consolidation of the one-room district school. Results have been beyond the expectations of school men, every breath and opposition to the system has blown away, and it may truthfully be said that it has become an idol of the people of the state. ”

“ The control of the ward schools is vested in district school boards, the districts usually being coextensive with the wards. The Central Board of Education, composed of one representative from each district board, has direct control of the high schools and regulates the preparatory courses of study. Each district makes its own tax levy. ”

“ A few states have already established county-schools of agriculture and domestic science for those boys and girls who have completed the work of the ordinary district-school. This movement to give a high-school education to country pupils is one of the most important reforms of the present time. So important, in fact, is it that a plan to have the national government make special appropriations for the support of these schools has been prepared and considered by Congress. ”

“ In using the school plant for any activities, whether simply for the usual eight classes or to supply the community with all sorts of opportunities, as the Gary schools are doing and as Mr. Valentine’s school is doing, the people of the community feel that they are using for their own ends public facilities which have been paid for by their taxes. They want to see real, tangible results in the way of more prosperous and efficient families and better civic conditions, coming from the increased plant in the district school. ”

“ We have to make them common practice in every school district in America.
All across our Nation, we're seeing a grassroots revolution in education, a revolution in accountability and rising expectations. This year we have a rare opportunity to use our new prosperity to help this revolution spread to every single school district, every classroom, every child. ”

“ The [Pg 291] district inspector is always a man of pedagogical training and experience. He is appointed for life and devotes his whole time to the schools in his district. His efficient and wise inspection of the schools insures their success. The district school board erects school buildings, determines the amount of the teachers' salaries, oversees their pensions, enforces compulsory attendance laws, decides upon taxable property, fixes boundary lines, and provides for the finances. ”

“ At the headquarters of each district there is a high school for boys controlled by the Education Department. In each district there are Government middle schools, Anglovernacular or Vernacular, and primary schools, managed by the Municipal Committees and District Boards. Each middle school has a primary, and each high school a primary and a middle, department. For the convenience of pupils who cannot attend school while living at home hostels are attached to many middle and high schools. ”

“ The directors of any school district in the state, which shall contain 500 inhabitants or more, may, when authorized thereto by the qualified electors of such district, provide for the establishment and maintenance therein, as part of the common school system, schools commonly known as kindergartens. ”

“ Once again we must turn to the consolidated school as the solution of our difficulty. The isolated district school will not be able to demand and secure a worthy grade of preparation for teaching. The educational standards will not rise high enough under this system to create a public demand for skilled teachers. Nor can such salaries be paid as will encourage thorough and extensive study and preparation for teaching. And, finally, the professional incentives are not sufficiently strong in such schools to create a true craft spirit toward teaching. ”

“ This body in advocating equality of educational oportunity for all and is planning a campaign to secure legislation which will make the county the unit for taxation and which will create a state fund to be apportioned, not according to school attendance, but according to the needs of districts.
One of the great hindrances to progress in our rural schools is the inefficient instruction prevailing there. Statistics show that only young, untrained teachers or those who can not obtain positions elsewhere are in the main the teachers of the one-room district schools. ”

“ As yet there is no educational tax leviable throughout the Territory. Each district makes its own regulations. A city rate supports a school in each ward. The buildings are of plain adobe, thirty feet by twenty. They also serve as meeting-places on Sabbath evenings. There are tutoresses in three or four of the school-houses, who teach all the year round, whereas male education is usually limited by necessity to the three winter months. A certain difficulty exists in finding instructors. ”

“ The school spirit is abroad in the consolidated school district; people are thinking and talking school. It becomes the customary and fashionable thing to send children to school.
Better Supervision.—There is also much better supervision in the consolidated school; for, in addition to the supervision given by the county superintendent or his assistants, there is also the supervision of the principal, or head teacher. This is in itself no small factor in the making of a good school. Good supervision always makes strongly for efficiency. ”

“ The education act of 1870 divided England into school districts for the purposes of elementary education, and enacted that in every district a sufficient amount of accommodation must be provided in public elementary schools for all children resident in the district, for whose elementary education sufficient and suitable provision was not otherwise made. ”

“ Boundary lines may be bridged where there has been a constitutional violation calling for inter-district relief, but the notion that school district lines may be casually ignored or treated as a mere administrative convenience is contrary to the history of public education in our country. No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools ”

“ When we consider that there are 223 districts in the Territory, and each one pursuing a different course of study and exacting different requirements for the passing from one grade to the next higher, and this changed every time the district changes teachers, the reason becomes more apparent. There should be uniformity, so that if a child has completed the seventh year’s work in the country schools and desires to enter the eighth grade in a city school, he will have a standing which will entitle him to enter that grade. ”

“ Under the district system there is an annual school meeting of the voters of the district, who vote the school taxes, determine the length of the school year, and elect a board of education or school trustees. The trustees look after the school property, choose the teacher and fix his salary, and in a general way manage the school business. Each school is independent of all other schools. ”

“ The agency shall ensure that each school district or open-enrollment charter school teaches civics education as part of the district's social studies curriculum in a manner consistent with the essential knowledge and skills adopted under Subsection (h-2) . ”

“ After the minister, no man has more nearly in his own hands the uplift of the rural district than the schoolmaster. The school is a power plant for intelligence, vision, training, and manhood. It is for use. And wisely used must render great help in solving the rural problem. But the school board, and the schoolmaster of the country districts, must rise to a higher and more intelligent plane of energy if they are to count in the new life of the community. ”

“ In recognition of the fact that individual school districts may lack the funds or the population to support a junior college of their own, the state legislature has authorized them to make voluntary arrangements with their neighbors for joint formation of a junior college district. If one of the cooperating school districts greatly preponderates in size, it enters into the arrangement knowing that its representation on the board of trustees, while large, will be somewhat smaller than it would be if based strictly on relative school enumeration. ”

“ Whenever 100 freeholders request it, the county commissioners must submit to the voters of a proposed high school district the question of establishing a high school district, and each precinct giving a majority vote for it constitutes a part of such a district for establishing and maintaining a high school. All children between seven and fourteen years of age must attend a public, private or parochial school during the entire time that the public school of their district is in session unless excused by the district board. ”

“ The importance of the proper discharge of this responsibility cannot be overemphasized. "A school district is a part of the machinery of government, as much so, to all intents and purposes, as a town or township. ”

“ The farmers who out of a splendid idealism placed a schoolhouse at every cross roads, on every hilltop and in every mountain valley, exact a tribute of praise from their successors. The unit of measurement of the school district, on which this system was based, was the day's journey of a child six years of age. Two miles must be its longest radius. The generation who spanned this continent with the measure of an infant's pace, mapped the land into districts, erected houses at the centers, and employed teachers as the masters of learning for these little states, were men of statesmanlike power. ”