The Schoolmaster’s Plea: Why Snohomish Needs Better Classrooms

The county is divided into eight districts, and with one exception school has been taught during the year in every one; none less than three months. District No. 1 (Snohomish City District) has had school for over nine months, and will, in all probability, the coming year maintain a school all the year round.

The assessment for school purposes for the year 1877 amounts to $1,301.21, to be apportioned among the various districts. Districts Nos. 2, 4 and 8 have each of them built during the year new and comfortable school buildings, the citizens of those districts having raised most of the money for that purpose from private sources.

District No. 1 has presented its schoolroom with new seats of the most approved pattern. Since the last apportionment the number of scholars has increased from 98 to 40 in District No. 1. The school-house in this District needs to be enlarged at once. I should recommend that the building be altered on such a plan as will permit the grading of the school, as it will be impossible for one teacher to do justice to so large a school much longer; and I prefer the plan of grading the school, rather than that of dividing the district.

No new districts have been created during the year, and none have been asked for. District No. 1, for a portion of the year, and Districts No. 2 and No. 7 have been taught by gentlemen; all the other Districts have, wisely I think, employed lady teachers. Greater progress, better government, and better results generally, have been obtained in the schools taught by ladies than in those taught by gentlemen.

The pupils of District No. 1 have, by giving concerts under the direction of their teacher, raised a fund sufficient to purchase an organ, which has become the property of the District. Of course 'music' has become a fixed feature in this school, and so beneficial has been the result as an element of discipline, recreation and refinement, that I should be derelict of duty if I failed to recommend every district in the county to have musical exercises, both instrumental and vocal, wherever it can possibly be done.

All the districts except 2, 4 and 8 need better accommodations for their school children. Many of the buildings used for school purposes are unfit for children to enter. I hope before long that this will be remedied. True we are all poor. To tax ourselves to build a good house is quite a burden. But it will be cheerfully borne. The duty of providing comfortable and healthy school rooms for the little ones among us is imperative. It is better than every other interest; ignorance is the bed of crime. If any of these little innocents that pass us in the street every day on their way to the school house, never turn out to be criminals, for the lack of suitable means of acquiring an education which they have had, it will be the culprit, not the man, and upon our heads will posterity lay the imputation: for their errors. Our county is new and our population hardly poor—many of them advanced in years, so commencing the book at no time. But poverty is no excuse for neglecting to lay the foundation of our school system on a broad, liberal basis.

The cause is one of reason, investigation, discussion and research. To send our sons out into the world with a sound physical frame and a cultivated intellect, is a better capital to start life with than a long roll or two account. To send them out uneducated, is sowing them in a great laboring strain around us. Let us not complain or murmur if the burden of taxes, one way and another, for school purposes in a young town. Let us be a little self-denying, a little patriotic. Though we cut a plainer hunt, and wear an humble garment, our own, on account of it, let us see well to it that we spread before our little ones intellectual viands of the choicest variety, and cause their minds in bright garments of truth. Then will our future be honored and mirthful homes.

A. L. FULLER, Sup't.