The Board of Education

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THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

Considerable dissatisfaction is felt, and that not unreasonably, with the manner in which the Board of Education performs its duties. The Board is so large as to be unwieldy; and its committees consist of so many members that it is difficult to get a quorum of them together. To this alone can we attribute the fact that the practical work is often left to a single member, who is thus able to indulge and gratify his own peculiar ideas, and carry out his own crotchets without hindrance or interruption from his fellow members. If we might afford an explanation of this laxity of attention on the party of the majority of the members, we should opine that the latter, not receiving any pay for their services, conceive that they confer a favor on the public by taking the office; and the people must not "look a gift horse in the mouth," nor grumble at the manner in which duties are performed, for which the officials to whom they are entrusted receive no pecuniary compensation. We proceed to adduce a few instances of the evil results of the negligence and dilatoriness which mark the executive functions of the Board.

Schoolhouse No. 18 was to have been repaired during the last vacation. The work was then commenced (under Mr. Harris's supreme direction, of course). The heating apparatus is not yet put in operation and the pupils are either subjected to intense discomfort this cold weather, or the trustees have to dismiss them from school—the latter alternative has been resorted to.

Schoolhouse No. 12 is now under repair, which might have been and should have been finished during the vacation. As it is, the school is suspended and the pupils turned into the streets, to the annoyance of their parents, the loss of their own education, and the waste of the money which is meanwhile being paid to teachers for instruction which the scholars did not get.

Schoolhouse No. 19 is in the same category as No. 12 with regard to repairs, the pupils having been dismissed to admit of work being done which might and should have been done during the vacation.

Schoolhouse No. 23, like all, or nearly all, of the above, is as yet without heating apparatus.

By the closing of these schools (which might have been averted by the accomplishment of the work during the late vacation,) between three and four thousand scholars are, or have been until within a day or two, running about the streets in the eastern part of the city alone, who ought to be at school, and for whose instruction the public money at this moment is paying. Nor is this all.

These are by no means the worst feature of the blundering. The heating apparatus which is being put in these schools (or some of them) is the same miserable hot air arrangement to which the catastrophe in No. 14 last year is attributable. Untaught by the disastrous and melancholy lesson then afforded them, the Board insists on the adoption of their favorite hot air system, with only one alteration, which renders it as ridiculous as it confessedly is dangerous. Formerly the registers through which the hot air is admitted into the apartments were placed in the floors, and the air warmed the whole apartment before being let out at the top of the room. But now, in perfect contempt of the laws of pneumatics and the dictates of common sense, the registers are placed at a height actually above the heads of the children. The ventilating apparatus, such as it may be, is of course located at the top of the rooms, hence the heat both comes in and goes out above the heads of the children, affording them no warmth whatever. If the rarified air will obey the Board instead of obeying the scientific laws which have invariably heretofore governed it, the class rooms may be properly warmed; but if Providence refuses to effect a miracle for their sake, the children will derive no benefit whatever from this model scheme of warming their apartments. Formerly, when they came in with wet or cold feet, they would stand for a while on the registers and restore the circulation of the blood in their pedal extremities; but now whatever warmth they experience will affect their heads instead of their feet. "Keep your head cool and your feet warm," is the generally received rule for winter; but the Board reverse this, and desire the children to pursue their studies with warm head and cold feet. If the members of the Board of Education suppose that the tendency of rarified air is downward, they ought themselves to become pupils in elementary science, instead of directors of a system of instruction. If they do not so suppose, they should entrust the construction and fitting up of the schoolhouses to more prompt, vigilant, and intelligent supervision than appears now to be exercised.