Excerpt from The Consolidation of School Districts An address delivered before the Department of School Administration, National Educational Association, Thursday morning. July 9, 1903. This subject is usually more fully expressed as The Consolidation of School Districts, the Centralization of Rural Schools, and the Transportation of Pupils at Public Expense. The ideal plan contemplates the discontinuance of the small schools within a given area, say a congressional township, and the maintenance of one graded school instead at some point near the center of the township. To illustrate: suppose a township to be divided into nine rural school districts, each comprising four square miles of territory, with a low assessed valuation, a high tax levy, a small, neglected and dilapidated frame schoolhouse varying from 16x24 feet to 24x30 feet, with three windows on each side and one window and a door in one end, a stove, and without basement and interior closets. This schoolhouse, if located at the center of this school district of four square miles, will be two miles by section line roads from the homes at the corners of the district. School is maintained six, seven or eight months during the year, under the jurisdiction of a board of three trustees, and in our busy western section of the country, is usually taught by a young woman under twenty-one years of age, who is paid $30 amouth for teaching or "keeping" school, building fires and " sweeping out." In this school we may find an average daily attendance of sixteen pupils, a high estimate by the way, representing all ages from five to twenty years, all grades from the primary to the high school and occasionally with two or three high school branches crowded in. and from thirty to forty recitations daily. The attendance is irregular and spasmodic, and tardiness is often the rule, children continuing to arrive until ten o'clock. Pupils are "put back." term after term by the "new" teacher, as records are usually destroyed or lost. Apparatus is either unknown or out-of-date, blackboard scanty and furniture rackety. This is the good old-fashioned "deestrick skool" taught by the new woman of twenty whohas succeeded and supplanted theold man of forty - and of forty years ago! Consolidation or centralization proposes to discontinue these small districts as separate organizations, and these rural schools and schoolhouses, and to establish in lien thereof one central graded school for the township, housing ten or more grades in a four-room frame or brick schoolhouse, well constructed, correctly lighted, heated, ventilated, and seated, with basement and interior closets, a janitor, a principal and three other teachers, thirty-six pupils and three grades to the room, twelve to fifteen recitations daily in each room, and to transport the pupils by public conveyance to and from the schoolhouse daily. We would then have a township board of education of five or seven members, would and could pay the principal $60.00 to $75.00 a month and the three assistants about $45.00 a month each. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.