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REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON LIBRARIES AND ANNUAL REPORT.

To the honorable the Commissioners of the District of Columbia.

GENTLEMEN: We have the honor to submit herewith the report of the board of trustees of the public schools for the year ending June 30, 1888. For statistics of attendance, accommodations, expenditures, number of teachers employed, with the salary of each, and other similar subjects of appropriate inquiry, reference is made to the accompanying reports of Superintendents Powell and Cook, which are adopted and appended as a part of this report.

In most respects the close of the school year 1887-'88 marks a hopeful advance in the general conditions attending our public schools and essential to their welfare and success. The liberal appropriations by

Congress during the past two years for additional school buildings has materially reduced what two years ago was the greatest and most overshadowing need of the schools, and a continuance of similar liberality for the next year or two will doubtless wholly supply the deficiency in that regard which at that time so seriously impaired their efficiency.

The manual training and the night schools have been most successfully conducted; and while, to those interested in them, the annual appropriations for their maintenance seem to fall materially short of their development and manifest capacity for good, an increasing interest in and disposition to sustain and foster them, both upon the part of Congress and in the community, gives hope and encouragement for their future.

The relations between the teachers, the officers, and the board have been, in the main, exceptionally harmonious and pleasant; the order of the schools has been excellent, the progress and proficiency of the pupils has been highly satisfactory to parents and officials alike, and the public schools continue to grow in favor with all classes of our citizens. The matters at this time most urgently needing the attention of yourselves and of Congress are two, viz: The needed accommodations for the pupils of our high schools, and the insufficient pay of our teachers; and with a view of presenting these urgent needs especially to your consideration, and through you to that of the law-making power, the specific recommendations of this report will be confined to these two subjects.

THE HIGH SCHOOLS.

The recommendation contained in the last two reports of the Board, relative to a new and suitable building for the colored high school, is respectfully and earnestly renewed. As stated in the last reportthe building at present used in part for the purposes of this school is in an extremely inconvenient location for the great body of the pupils for whom it is designed; it has little or no special adaptation for the purpose, and, in addition, every available seat in it is urgently needed to supply the wants of the section of the city in which it stands for schools of lower grades. The number of pupils in attendance is now between three and four hundred; the school is a most useful and important factor in the moral and intellectual development of a large and deserving portion of the population of the District, bearing their due share of taxation and other public burdens; and we submit that a suitable high-school building, comparing favorably in loca tion and appointments with the Washington High School, is both necessary and just. With reference to the Washington High School, the following is extracted from the report of the Board for the last preceding school year, changed only to show the facts existing last year:

THE WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL.

Your attention is again invited, respectfully but most urgently, to the imperative necessity of enlarging the Washington High School Building. In our report for last year, the following language was employed upon this subject:

"The present High School Building is crowded to its utmost capacity, and, with a largely increased attendance over that of last year in the schools of the eighth grade, it necessarily follows either that the capacity of that building must be enlarged before the opening of the next school year, or that a large number of pupils entitled to admission there must be excluded for want of accommodation. The latter alternative is one which, in justice to the youth of the District and to the community, every effort, it is hoped, will be exerted to avert."

The failure of this recommendation to meet the approval of Congress has been attended by the unfortunate consequence, as shown by the report of Principal Lane, that 398 of our pupils, whose proficiency and deportment have entitled them to admission to the High School, are unavoidably denied its privileges except for one-half of each day of the school year. At the present rate of increase in attendance, no diminution of which is either to be expected or desired, the number of pupils so circumstanced will, for the next or succeeding year, inevitably be considerably larger, unless additional accommodation is provided; resulting in a discrimination between equally meritorious pupils neither fair nor just, and a hurtful restriction of school privileges as to a large number of them, to which they should not be subjected.

The self-obviously necessary enlargement thus recommended by the Board in its re port for last year was antagonized, and presumably defeated, by the objection that the accommodation for the lower grades was also insufficient, and that, of the two, the latter were entitled to paramount consideration.

If the alternative really is to deprive either the lower or the higher grades of educational opportunity, this Board concurs unanimously and most heartily in the proposition above stated. It is deemed proper, however, to invite your attention, and through you that of the law-making power, to the following considerations, namely: In all grades below the High School, each school of children is under the charge of a single teacher, taught in a single room, and requiring little or no apparatus or appliances for their due and efficient instruction other than such as can be readily supplied to the room they occupy. Until, therefore, school buildings adequate to the accommodation of the school population of this District can be afforded, the evil can be at

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