The Rapid Rise of Ballard's Schools
How a small timber town's student population exploded, leading to a controversial new policy on married teachers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Andrew McCann, clerk of the Ballard school board, has prepared an interesting report of school district No. 50, from its organization in April 1886 to the close of the last school year, June 30. The population of Salmon Bay in 1886 was twenty-five, including nine pupils of school age. The first school was taught in a little cabin donated by the late John Brygger. In 1888 and 1889, Mrs. Hadfield taught a number of pupils gratuitously in a little log cabin between Ballard Avenue and the Gilman Park Lumber Company's sawmill. In September 1889, the school board built a new two-room schoolhouse near the west end of Broadway. But the population increased so rapidly in 1890 and 1891 that the district was compelled to build a larger structure in less than a year at a cost of $20,000. For the coming year, all old teachers will be re-engaged except for three women who were debarred by the new decision of the school board not to employ married women as teachers.
“The district was compelled to build another and larger building in less than a year at a cost of $20,000.”
Ballard's rapid expansion from a mill-town outpost to a dense neighborhood remains the defining narrative of Seattle's growth. The 1892 policy excluding married women from teaching highlights the era's restrictive labor practices, a sharp contrast to today's ongoing struggles with teacher retention and living costs in the same neighborhood.
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