This is the new program for a school of eight grades. In the case of the complete school plant, such as those of the Emerson and Froebel Schools in Gary, with their twelve grades and their forty or more classes apiece, the program becomes much more complicated. But the division of time follows essentially the outlines given above, the high-school classes resembling the upper grammar grades’ distribution of time and subjects.
The noteworthy thing about this program, apart from the ingenious and successful multiple use of the school plant it represents, is the equable distribution of time between the “regular studies” and the “special activities.” In the Gary school, the “special work,” more or less an appendage in the ordinary public school, is as regular as the “regular work.” Yet the amount of academic work is no less than that in the ordinary schools. The various fundamental groups are participated in on equal terms. No subject is slighted, no age is slighted. The extended school day, which absorbs the “street and alley time” of the city child, affords ample opportunity for all activities. No activity is continued long enough to cause fatigue, while the constant daily cultivation of each activity provides the constant drill and the thoroughness of training which the ordinary school, with its short day and crowded curriculum, is compelled to slight. Such a program seems to be a highly rational distribution of school activities, as ingenious from the point of view of educational engineering as it is pedagogically sound. By treating the daily use of the schools as a public service, the Gary program obtains, for twice the number of children ordinarily accommodated, twice the number of facilities ordinarily provided. Each individual is immensely benefited because all are served. “The only reason why the public—that is, ourselves collectively—can afford to provide things for each of us individually that we cannot provide for ourselves privately, is that collectively we secure a multiple use of the facilities.”
The same principles of administrative economy—an economy which creates rather than impoverishes—are applied to the yearly schedule as to the daily program. The Gary authorities find that they cannot afford to let their plant stand idle two or three months of the year, and are therefore working toward an all-year school. This effort coincides with a growing general belief that the long summer vacations not only demoralize the city child, but are a great waste of educational influence. At the present time state laws hinder the completion of the all-year plan. The Gary schools now have ten months of regular compulsory school, and ten weeks of voluntary vacation school, but they are working toward an organization of four quarters of twelve weeks each. This plan was approximated by Superintendent Wirt in the Bluffton schools before he came to Gary. Under this scheme pupils are required to attend any three of the four quarters, attendance in the remaining quarter being wholly voluntary. In Bluffton it was found that the attendance of the younger children for the summer quarter was greater than for any other quarter in the year. With the traditional term organization, many children are unavoidably absent in the winter on account of sickness and weather. Under the four-quarter arrangement, however, the allotted vacation of these children could be so organized as to include this absence and thus insure thirty-six weeks of schooling. “When people are given a chance,” says Superintendent Wirt, “it is found that they do not want to go to school at the same time any more than they all want to travel at the same time.”
The all-year school would not increase the cost of maintenance. For with the same number of pupils per teacher, the cost is the same whether the pupils are all taught together for thirty-six weeks, on the traditional plan, or whether only three quarters of them are taught at a time throughout a school year of forty-eight weeks.
The economies which this multiple use of school facilities effects are so large as to provide ample funds for all the special features of the Gary plan of education. These savings are in construction, in operation and maintenance, and in instruction. Savings in construction alone are very large. Since, under the duplicate-school plan, two complete schools may be accommodated in one building, the number of school plants may be greatly reduced. In the light of the Gary plan, therefore, those cities which are confronted with problems of school congestion are in the paradoxical situation of having, not too few buildings, but actually too many. Fewer and better plants would accommodate their children under the Gary plan. It must be remembered that the Gary schools at present have accommodations for many more children than there are children to use them, and this in spite of a phenomenal growth of population. The erection of a number of Gary unit plants is less expensive than the erection of a much larger number of ordinary school-buildings of the common school type. For the cost of building construction does not increase in proportion to the size of the building, and large sums may be saved on the fewer sites required. The diminution in the number of classrooms in the Gary school plant is a distinct source of economy, owing to the fact that the classroom is uniformly the most expensive portion of the school plant. The Gary experience seems to show that the best and completest unit school plant is also the cheapest. The plan of having the twelve grades under one roof avoids the reduplication of expensive equipment in several centers. And the self-sustaining industrial shops cut off an item of “vocational training” expense which most cities find almost financially prohibitive.
As for the costs of operation and maintenance, it is obvious that increasing the size of the school plant makes for economy. The cost of janitor service, administrative charges, heating, lighting, etc., are much reduced by consolidation. Nor, in order to effect these economies, need the size of the school plant be made so large as to make administration unwieldy. The largest Gary school plant, operating with all these economies, accommodates only twenty-seven hundred children, forty children to a teacher, while it is the intention to reduce the average number of children per teacher to thirty, and the building capacity to two thousand children.
Finally, the cost per pupil for instruction is decreased by the plan of specializing and departmentalizing the work, and thus eliminating overhead charges for supervisors. It should be pointed out again that all these economies actually increase the educational efficiencies of the school.
The figures show that the Gary school plan does not increase public expenditures for educational purposes. The Jefferson School, built before Superintendent Wirt came to Gary, and representing the common type of modern school-building, was erected at a cost of $90,000 to accommodate 360 pupils, with 40 pupils per teacher. This is a per-capita construction cost of $250, a cost exactly equal to that of a typical New Jersey High School recently erected at a cost of $125,000, with a maximum capacity of 500 pupils. The capacity of the Emerson School, constructed as an ideal Gary school plant, is 1800, with 30 pupils to a teacher. Its cost, with a large playground and the wealth of facilities already described, was about $300,000. The per-capita cost of construction was therefore $166. At its maximum capacity, with 40 pupils to the teacher, the per-capita cost of construction would be only $111, as against $250 for the Jefferson School, with no facilities. Further tables of comparative costs will be found in the Appendix.
The funds liberated by the application of these simple economical principles to public-school finance are so large as to give Gary the means to provide, as Superintendent Wirt says, “any kind of a school desired.” Extraordinarily complete educational and recreational facilities may be furnished for all the people all the year round. Money is thus provided for an evening school for adults on an almost unprecedented scale. The Gary evening schools, held in the four largest school plants, four evenings a week throughout the regular school year from 7 to 9.30 P.M., have an attendance over two thirds that of the regular day schools. The cost of the evening school is only thirteen per cent of the day-school cost.
The evening schools of Gary resemble a people’s university. Practically every study authorized by state law is given, and the bulletin of courses is like a university catalogue. All the shops, laboratories, studios, and classrooms are thrown open, either to repeat the day studies or to present more advanced work. All the work, industrial and academic, is open on equal terms to men and women. During 1914-15, 4300 students, representing all classes in the community, are said to have been enrolled in the Gary evening schools, with an average monthly enrollment of 3103. Over two thousand of the nine thousand voters at the last city election were said to be enrolled in the Gary evening schools. There are said to be more men over twenty-one attending evening schools in Gary than there are boys of all ages attending the day schools.