CHAPTER X
ORGANIZATION OF THE INSTITUTIONS AND GENERAL PROVISIONS
Arrangements in the Different States
Provision for the education of the deaf is made by the different states as a general rule in local institutions. In only four states are deaf children sent at public expense to a school outside for their instruction: Delaware, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Wyoming. In these, owing to their comparatively small populations, it has been considered more economical and satisfactory to contract with the school in an adjoining state.
In each of the other states there is at least one institution, or sixty-five in all. In Connecticut and the District of Columbia[253] there are two, in Massachusetts three, in Pennsylvania four, and in New York eight. In some of these the schools are distributed over the state the better to reach all the pupils. In the Southern states there are usually separate departments in the regular institutions for children of the colored race,[254] but in some there are special arrangements. In Virginia there is one school for the white deaf and blind, and another for the colored. In North Carolina there is a school for the white deaf, and another for the blind with a department for the colored deaf and blind. In Alabama, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Texas each there is a school for the white deaf and another for the colored deaf and blind.[255]
In nearly all the states these schools are strictly public institutions, owned by the state and supported wholly by taxation, and are under the direct control and supervision of the legislature. In a few of the Eastern states the institutions are in private hands and operated under their immediate direction, and in some cases supported in part by endowment funds, but at the same time receiving appropriations from the state, and subject to its authority and general oversight. They are thus "semi-public" or "quasi-public" institutions, and will need a brief separate treatment, as will also the "dual schools," where the deaf and blind are educated together.
Semi-Public Institutions
The semi-public institutions are seventeen in number, and are found in six states: Connecticut, Maryland,[256] Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania,[257] and Vermont. Institutions in these states have remained private corporations from the time they were established, some of them being, as we have seen, the first schools that were created for the deaf. A certain number were especially favored by private munificence at their beginning, and continued to be supported by private funds till the state came to their aid and undertook to assist by regular appropriations. Other schools have been similarly organized, but have always depended largely on the appropriations from the state. All of them are in the hands of societies,[258] organized and chartered as corporations under the laws of the state. In some cases membership is open to those interested on the payment of the regular dues or fees.[259]
These institutions, while corporate bodies, are under the authority and supervision of the state. Their relation to the state and the conditions under which they exist may be understood from their position in New York. Here the institutions were chartered by the state as benevolent societies, the buildings and grounds being presented, or the money for them collected, by the trustees, and the property reverting to the state if alienated to another use.[260] These schools are all subsidized from the state treasury in per capita allowances for the pupils received;[261] and to some, especially the newer ones, there are general appropriations from time to time for buildings and the like. The regular grants, however, are often not sufficient for the cost of maintenance, which means that the institutions are instructing the children of the state, and maintaining them, at a cost to which the state contributes only a part. Such balances are covered from the endowment funds and private donations, but it would seem that the state gets a good bargain from the transaction.[262]