71Schools

Recently the government requested boards of education to provide rooms for such students. It was planned to form evening classes. The government agreed to furnish instruments and the telegraph companies offered to supply instructors.

71:2
EARLY HISTORY AND GROWTH
Lakewood Press March 7, 1918, p.25

At the time of Lakewood's incorporation there were only three schools in operation. A one-room school at the site of the present McKinley school, a one-room school at Garfield, with a four-room school where Grant school now stands.

Soon after Lakewood’s incorporation, on account of its rapid growth new structures were added and pace was kept in building expansion with the influx of youth, and pupils.

Following are the school buildings and rooms contained as well as educational equipment:

Grant School, 18 class rooms
Manual training, four rooms
McKinley School, 18 rooms
Present high school building, 23 rooms
Franklin School, eight rooms
Harrison School, 18 rooms
Garfield School, 20 rooms
Madison School, 16 rooms
Lincoln School, 18 rooms
New High School, buildings, 57 class rooms, exclusive of auditorium and other rooms.

In the various school buildings of the city there are employed a total of one hundred and eighty-three teachers, distributed in the different buildings as follows:

High school building, H.W. Kennedy, principal, 36.
Franklin Avenue building, Rachel Bevington, principal, 8.
Garfield School, Mabelle Morrison, Principal, 22.
Grant School, Flora Wilcox, principal, 26.
Harrison School, Margaret O'Connor, principal, 21.
Lincoln School, Anna Sigler, principal, 23.
Madison School, Ada Gedney, principal, 21.
McKinley School, Caroline E. Martin, principal, 26.

The courses of study in both the high school and the various ward buildings are of the most approved kind and the fact that all colleges of the United States accept the Lakewood graduates on their diplomas is sufficient evidence that Lakewood’s boys and girls of today, the men and women of tomorrow, receive the best education it is possible to give to fit them for the part they are destined to take.

One of the most important administrative questions considered by school superintendents the country over in recent years is that of attempting to meet the individual needs of the children in any community. This probably cannot be done in any absolute way, but it can be done in an approximate way where those in charge have a deep concern about the individual welfare of the children. One of the first moves made in the Lakewood schools to recognize this idea in a large way was made about two years ago when the Lakewood board of education authorized the change of administration from what is known as the eight-four plan to what is known as the six-six plan. Up to that time there had been eight years of granmar school instruction and four years of high school instruction. Believing that an opportunity should be offered to boys and girls before the end of the eight-year period for some regard to the individual tastes and aptitudes of children, the change was authorized to go into effect with the opening of the new high school building which would give opportunity to boys and girls to enter upon a six-year high school course immediately after completing the first six grades. This is known as the six-six plan--that is--six years of grammar achool and six years of high school. This arrangement makes it possible for boys and girls to take up work at the end of the sixth grade instead of at the end of the eighth grade, which will be more along the line of vocations which they contemplate entering upon in later life--in other words--it has regard for the individual child.

A second step taken in Lakewood in this direction was in the interest of a relatively small number of children who were not able to do the regular work of the schools. At first one room was opened at Grant school; later another one at Garfield school, and still later another one at Harrison school. In these schools children do considerable more of hand work, such as weaving, brush making, cane-seating, basket making, book binding, sewing, knitting, bench work and the like; all the while keeping in mind the individual abilities of the children concerned.

A third step in this direction will be taken at the beginning of this semester in two buildings--one in East Lakewood at Harrison school, the other in west Lakewood at McKinley school. The plan is to gather in a school those children who find certain subjects very difficult, but who are interested in some form of hand work. These children will do less of the difficult arithmetic and technical grammar work and will have a period a day to devote to work, by boys in the manual training shop, and to work by girls in sewing and cooking in the domestic science room. This will give to these children work in which they can excel, will keep up their interest which in turn will have the effect of holding them in school for a longer time than probably would be true under other circumstances.

A fourth step in the direction of regarding the individual child relates chiefly to foreign-born children who come to us with the serious handicap of not yet having learned the English language. Instead of requiring children to cover a certain piece of work in a certain time with the probability of repeating it because of this handicap, they will be allowed to take three semesters to do two semesters’ work with the belief that this work can be done in this time in such a way that the work will not need to be repeated. Children will have the consciousness of progressing, although somewhat more slowly. The effect upon the spirits of children under this plan will be evident.

With the opening of the new high school, which we hope will take place next September, large plans are being laid for commercial and industrial courses which will be very complete and which will offer work in academic courses as before, together with fine opportunities in commercial subjects, such as bookkeeping typewriting, and the like; also industrial courses including domestic arts and applied arts, music, etc., all of which courses will be described more fully in another statement.

With the opening of the new building it is earnestly hoped that such relief will be furnished that double sessions will no longer be needed in Lakewood, at least for a time. Lakewood may well be proud of the advantages which its children have in prospect in this suburban community, as the board of education and all who are concerned in administering school matters in this community will be satisfied with nothing less than the best.

Lakewood is to Cleveland what Evanston is to Chicago, Mont Claire to New York. What was more fitting than that the people of Lakewood should buy 18 acres of ground as a site for an unusual school for an unusual community? The location is ideal, situated between Bunts Road and Robinwood on Franklin Avenue.

At present four buildings are under construction, a main building, women’s building, men's building, and heating plant.

In the main building are administration offices, laboratories, recitation rooms, study halls, auditorium, library and a gymnasium. On the third floor are ample quarters for commercial work. The auditorium has a seating capacity of one thousand and will be a commodius community meeting place. The library seats 100 and has a capacity of 5,000 volumes.

The subjects taught in this building are Latin, German, French, Spanish. The sciences are agriculture, general science, general chemistry, industrial chemistry, household chemistry and physics. The science laboratories are models of their kind and will have every appliance for carrying on individual experimental work. Those wishing to specialize in chemistry or agriculture may spend 20 hours a week in the laboratory. Just a note on science-- in each course the pupil’s study is in the field of his probable experience. In physics, for example, the boy studies machines and electricity--often from the real machine instead of from a model. The girl studies the mechanics of the washing machine, ironing machine, sewing machine and vacuum sweeper. The study of levers, gears, speeds, friction forces, is all found in household implements. Why couldn’t Mrs. Future Lakewood make her own minor repairs, put washers in her faucets and fuse her electric devices. Incidentally, such physics is far more interesting to her than the study of steam engines, air pressures, and electricity developed on a piece of glass rod. The study halls accommodate 300 at a time and each pupil will have from one to three hours a day there for study. The gymnasium has the largest free floor space of any in Cleveland vicinity and a ceiling height of 22 feet. Here each seventh and eighth grade pupil has one hour a day for physical training and the older pupils four hours a week.

The building for women has a gymnasium 72 feet long, ample shower and locker facilities, rooms for sewing, millinery, applied art, pottery, art metal, cooking, botany, physiology and hygiene laboratory, a food chemistry laboratory and lecture room, a hospital and rest room, a housekeeping suite for practice work, and restaurant with a capacity for 600 guests. Expert dressmakers and milliners will teach the girls how to design, draft and make their own clothes and hats. This means better clothes and hats for the girl and at less money than it costs her now. The restaurant will be run entirely by the domestic science girls, thus assuring everybody the best of things to eat, and assuring the girl pleasant work and valuable information. A social and exhibit room on the second floor affords the girls a place to receive their friends and exhibit the work of the various departments. It is hoped Lakewood women will form a habit of visiting this women’s building, probably the only high school building of the kind, in the country. What is better education for a girl than to learn everything she ought to know about her home? What a pleasure for her to plan her home, her color schemes, the placing of her furniture. The housekeeping suite has a living room, bed room, bath room, dining room, and kitchen. Here the girls will take turns in homekeeping. There is just room for four guests and equipment for just that many. In the bed room, home nursing will be taught and all the simpler hospital methods used. Girls will learn the care and ventilation of the sick room, how to treat different diseases, how to change the bed linen without disturbing the patient, how to prepare and serve invalid cookery, how to do bandaging.

In the men's building are shops and laboratories for the study of electricity, machine shop, foundry, forge, pipe fitting and plumbing, carpentry, pattern making, sheet metal work, printing, drafting, photography. The shop teachers are expert mechanics. This assures the boy of right teaching in the handling of tools and materials. Every boy in technical courses has work in pattern shop and foundry, forging and pipe fitting, carpentry, machine shop and drafting. This gives him a good foundation for any shop or drafting room he may choose for special work. During the last two years he may spend 14 to 20 hours a week in that line of work he has chosen. The foundry has a capacity of about one ton of iron per hour. The carpenter shop is large, roomy, 20 feet high. Here the boy may build garages and small cottages, Everyone must learn to draw, and after he has learned the mechanics of the subject he may devote his time to architectural drawing, structural drawing or machine design. The electrical and machine shops are so constructed that one can drive in with team or truck and leave motors, generators, or automobiles for repairs.

The grounds are being laid out for large use. There is a quarter-mile track, a football field, soccer field, hockey field, baseball field, tennis courts, and basketball courts, Arrangements are made for skating in season. Four acres are set aside for practice in agriculture.

Never has a city made better physical preparation for the education of her youth--and Lakewood should surpass other cities. We are accustomed to better things here and expect them.

And what of the use of this magnificent educational plant? Four courses are offered--classical, scientific, technical and. commercial. Each course calls for 25 to 35 hours a week of class room instruction and 20 to 30 hours a week of study. Alll courses are founded on a good, four-year education in English, science and mathematics. To these fundamentals is added--Latin for the classical student, science and modern language for the scientific student, shop and drawing or sewing, cooking and art of the technical student, and commercial branches for those so inclined. All courses prepare for college. The technical and commercial courses also prepare those who will at the conclusion of their high school work enter the business world.

School will be in continuous session from 8:30 until 3:30, and from 3:30 to 6 school activities will occur. This latter time is given over to athletics, bands, orchestras, glee clubs, dramatics, and social good times. Music as well as athletics will be a feature of after school activities and school credit will be given for work done in both instrumental and vocal music.

Work hard, 8:30 - 3:30; play hard, 3:30 - 6; eat dinner, prepare next day’s lessons, go to bed.

Old Lakewood got its schooling in modest school room quarters. Young Lakewood has facilities beyond those of most colleges of twenty years ago.

One does not realize the magnitude of this educational plant until some data is given. When its doors are opened in September, 1918, it will be ready for 2,000 children, will have 57 class rooms, four acres of floor space, six acres of play grounds, will contain $35,OOO worth of furniture, $100,000 worth of equipment and the total cost will be over a million dollars.

Well may Lakewood be proud of such a school. The value of a community depends on how it teaches its youth “How to live”. For this reason the new high school is one of Lakewood’s greatest assets.

75:6
CURRICULUM[1](Teaching of German Language Protested)
Lakewood Press April 4, 1918 pg.1

School officials say that pupils in the Lakewood High School, who started a two-year course in the German language, must complete this course or stand to lose the credit in languages for the work that has already been done.

Patriotic and militant mothers of these pupils insist their sons shal1 no longer continue to occupy their time in the study of the German language. They ask whatever relief can be given by the school officials in the way of saving credits for work already performed and they insist that some plan can be found to give the credits for work, transferring the marks to a substitute study. First of all, they insist, however, that all study of the German language in the Lakewood schools stop forthwith, regardless of consequences. If credits cannot be saved, let them go; the all-important thing is that Lakewood schools shall be purged of all pro-German influences, not waiting until another year or another term.

Mrs. Charles E. Newell, 1113 Forest Road, has one boy in France, a member of the Amerioan Aviation Corps, and she has another boy in the Lakewood High School, who has bean studying German. She believes she will not be giving her soldier son proper support until she has exerted every effort to eliminate the study of the German language in the Lakewood school. “I do not believe,” she said yesterday, “that one boy should keep on studying the German language when the other boy is risking his life to put an end to German influence in the world. It would be an injustice for the boy to lose all credit for work he has performed, but it is a small matter compared with the continuance of a German language course in our schools. We hear too much about pro-German tendencies in Lakewood. I believe we should not delay in cutting out every German taint.”

Mrs. Newell said the women in the western end of the city had been planning to cooperate to take the matter to Superintendent Charles P. Lynch, at the high school office, as soon as arrangements could be completed. It is hoped a conference can be arranged this week for a gathering of the parents and pupils, with the school officials and teachers. The matter has not yet been taken formally to the school board, however, and none of the members or officers of the board have any knowledge of proposed plans, aside from what they have heard in an indirect way.

Benjamin Fuller was the only member of the Lakewood board of education who could be found yesterday. He said he had no official knowledge of any effort to drop the study of German from the schools, but he understood such a movement was under way. He said he had no objection personally to going on record, emphatically and unreservedly, as opposed to the study of the German language in the Lakewood schools. “I am opposed to all pro-German influences anywhere,” he said. “I believe we cannot draw the line too closely in favor of American institutions.” Mr. Fuller said he did not care to go on reoord on the subject of dropping the study of German from the school curriculum, until he knew exactly what effect such au act might have on the school work, already done by pupils in that language. He expected a special board meeting would be called in a few days to consider the subject as the regular board meeting would not be held until the last of the month. He said he might not favor the inmediate elimination of the study if it would be detrimental to the interests of the pupils, provided all advantages
might be saved by retaining the study in the system until the end of the school year in June.

Superintendent Lynch has not yet been officially informed of any action to consider the question, but he has heard some individual protests from parents, and apparently is preparing for an official conference to thresh out the matter. “It’s up to the board of education,” he said yesterday, “to decide whether German shall be eliminated.”

Superintendent Lynch is of the opinion that those who had been planning to count German as one of the “language” studies in figuring up their college entrance record, may be obliged, to lose all credit for work they may have done in the past in German classes. Most colleges require two years’ work in two languages; some want at least four years in one language. German has never been taught in the grammar schools and it has always been optional in the high school. Latin is an acceptable four-year study and a combination of Latin. and French, or French and Spanish is equally satisfactory. In a few cases, the situation squarely confronts the pupils and their parents, whether they wish to lose all credit for German work, where they cannot make arrangements for substitute credits with college authorities. According to Superintendent Lynch, there will be no way to save these credits in some cases.

Mrs. Belle T. Graber, president of the board, could not be found at home; it was reported at her residence on Detroit Avenue that she was engaged during the entire day in club work on the East Side.

71:7
CURRICULUM[2](Protest against Teaching of German Language)
Lakewood Press April 11, 1918 pg.1

While crowds cheered and bands played, hundreds of German textbooks from the Findlay High School and the Findlay College, and German books from the city library were burned in a big bonfire in the center of the business district on Monday night. When the fire was the hottest, the image of the Kaiser was consigned to the flames. A local dealer, who handles school books, threw his entire stock of texts into the fire. This ending of the teaching of Gennan end the elimination of the German language influenoe in the schools of Findlay was more spetacular then the means employed in most other Ohio cities, but directly or indirectly, accordimg to the press stories, similar results have been brought about in scores of cities and villages of Ohio and in thousands of localities throughout the United States.

The Lakewood Press brought to public attention last week the sentiment that had been aroused among the patrons of the Lakewood schools, favoring the elimination of German from the local curriculum. When the members of the school board met on Tuesday night, the matter was discussed informally, but no motion was offered and no official action was taken. A militant woman, who has one son in the aviation corps in France and another son in the Lakewood high school, had interviewed all of the members of the board, either personally or by telephone, prior to the meeting asking individually that some action be taken. This request, while it was not before the school board in any form, was the basis of the discussion. The indications are that the subject will come up for further discussion at the next board meeting, one week from Tuesday night or at some early meeting early in May.

Four members of the board were present, the president, Mrs. Graber, being out of the city. The board members declined to discuss the situation yesterday in advance of official action, but this much was given out, that furnishes a definite line on the feeling of the school officials:

“The consensus of opinion of the board members, as individuals, is that if any considerable number of patrons of the Lakewood schools desire the German language course to be dropped from the curriculum, their wish should be granted, but they do not feel that the board should be stampeded by the nervousness of one or two excited persons.”

So the issue seems to be up to the patrons of the schools to decide. If they desire to force the dropping of German from the curriculum, their course is plain. All that is required will be a petition, signed by any considerable number of persons, or the emphatic presentation of such wish personally by means of delegations from the Mothers’ Clubs or other influential organizations.

It was stated that the board members, in discussing the subject on Tuesday night expressed the opinion that the study of German in Lakewood High school was at an end, in any event; that there would not be “a corporal’s guard” of students--as one official expressed it—-who would take the study of German, as an elective study next year. The only question in the minds of the members seems to be, therefore, is whether they shall act at this time and officially wind up the study, or whether they shall let matters take their quiet and orderly course, with the expectation that the study will die out of its own accord at the end of the year. The action depends apparently, as stated, on the activity of the school patrons, whether or not anything is done before the end of the school year.

German has never been taught in any of the grade schools of Lakewood, but it is either a two or a four year course in a High School. At the present time, about 800 pupils are taking this study as elective, most of whom are in the two year course. If the study is dropped at the end of the school year in June, a large number of pupils will have completed the course and thus have saved whatever credits may be given for such work in the colleges and scientific schools. In the case of the majority of the German pupils, who have had only one year of this study, it seems to be a question what credits, if any, can be arranged by the local officials in dealing with college and higher educational institutions. The suggestion is obvious, however, that if German is dropped this year, as a study in the curriculum, practically of every high school in the United States, Lakewood students will be no worse off than other students. Undoubtedly some general rule will be adopted by the officers of colleges and technical schools to meet the emergency that has arisen, that affects the entire school system of the country.

One definite result of the agitation in Lakewood has been the dropping of the plan to give a German play at the end of the school year by students in the German department. No progress has been made in arranging for the play in June. The play was favorably discussed, however. Not only was the play not selected, but it was not even decided to give a play this year. While the matter was in the air last week, one determined father of a student in the German course filed a personal and emphatic objection with the school officials; he said he should not permit his daughter to take part in any German play and he quoted other parents holding the same view. A day or two later, the matter was settled by the announcement in their German classes made by the teacher, Miss Pascall that there would be no German play this year. So that nipped in the bud any prospective agitation on this point.

While the board members may be right in their conclusion that the study of German will die out at the end of the year, of its own accord in the Lakewood schools, without official action, it remains for the school patrons to determine whether they are willing to permit the Lakewood Board of Education to dodge action on the subject. Is it not the proper, dignified and patriotic thing to do to abolish formally the study of German in Lakewood immediately, following the action of hundreds of cities in Ohio and throughout the United States? The Lakewood Press believes the women of Lakewood should act, by petitioning the school board to drop the study from our schools. Certainly, an official vote can do no harm. Even if the same result may be brought about by inaction, we believe Lakewood should be placed on record, through its board of education, following the example of most of the other communities of the United States.

Let us hear from the women of Lakewood on this subject.

71:8
CURRICULUM[3](Lakewood High to Eliminate German)
Lakewood Press April 25, 1918 pg.1

Lakewood is the latest city to abolish the study of German in the schools. Superintendent Charles P. Lynch said Tuesday the board of education had taken action to eliminate study of that language at the end of the year.

French will be substituted and students to be graduated in February will drop German and take up French, continuing through the summer to get the required credits. About two hundred are now studying German.

71.9
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL[1]
(By Eric Griebling)
Lakewood Press May 2, 1918 pg.8

When viewed from a distance, the first thing that strikes us is its situation. From the Grant Building, it can be seen looming above the trees, sort of a promise to undergraduates. Out there, in uncertain distance, some mystic form it seems to be, just as high school life is like the thing on the other side of the hill or the object around the bend in the road is to the grammar school patron. There are no other notable buildings about, which might distract the charm of the view. It is simply the new high school. The dream of the near future.

Most every good Lakewoodite knows of the vast grape vineyards which belong to the single resident of Bunts Road, and about the woods near Madison Avenue. In the very midst of this picturesque combination, has been placed the new extensive educational plant which bids fair to thrive if the present enthusiasm holds out.

As we walk up Bunts Road, we soon get a good unobstructed view of the school. It strikes us as imposing, and yet it is hardly that. It is not magnificent, nor elegant, nor terribly dignified, nor even grand. It just can’t be described with common adjectives. It’s everything that a good school should be. The school isn’t exactly like an office building nor exactly like a church institution, it’s like Lakewood’s new high school. No better than some, but as good as the best.

The two minor buildings are just being started, while the main building is fast nearing completion. The rear of the buildings is all cluttered up with steam engines, steam shovels, donkey engines, other rubbish. But these are placed so that they cannot be seen from the front of the building. There is a series of steps to the front of the school which in themselves are worthy of note. Then there are two pil1ars that somehow seem to give the school a pleasing effect. They take away that stiff cold effect that is so common in modern school buildings. The pillars seem to support a stone on which are the words -- Lakewood High School. At the present time, the front door is boarded up so we went in the side door. The first thing we noticed was the flood of light which occupied every corner of the building, a point so necessary in school construction. The class rooms in which the hard wood floors have just been laid, even their present state of incompletion, are friendly and inviting, a thing which seems to be lacking in the old high school.

Naturally, the second story is lighter than the first, and so of course the third is lighter than the other two. The plan of the rooms is much the same on all the floors, we didn’t do much Looking around on the third story. But we noticed the building was thoroughly equipped for night work, if one can judge by the number of wires which seen to be striking out of the ceiling.

When we looked for a stairs to walk down on, we were taken completely by surprise. We verily bounced in on the balcony of the auditorium. It was the vastness of the auditorium which surprised us. It seemed that the local movie theater could be up into the auditorium and there would still be room left over. The stage is of considerable size and apparently is to be equipped with every thing which a stage should be equipped. Doubtless, this auditorium is destined to be the scene of many a future activity. At this time, however, the only activities performed there were performed by an Ethiopian who was mixing whitewash for the walls.

Immediately below the auditorium, is the gym. That too is of tremendous size, if not so imposing. There is of course a running track and a grandstand, and everything that a good gym should have.

71:10
CURRICULUM[4]
(German Texts Burned)
Lakewood Press May 30, 1918 Pg.1

Every German textbook at Lakewood High School was burned yesterday by Lakewood students in a huge bonfire on the school grounds.

The burning took place after the faculty had declared all students taking German exempt from final examinations.

The faculty’s decision was made because there will be no German taught at the suburban school next year. French Will entirely replace it.

71:11
REPORT ON EDUCATION
(Chamber Of Commerce Educational Committee)
Lakewood Press June 13, 1918 Pg.8

The following report was submitted at the June meeting of the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce, by the Educational Committee, composed. of the following members: W.H. Sigler, chairman; G.F. Hart, W.G. Schmus, H.A. Worman, L.H. Bleil. The Lakewood press is indebted to the courtesy of secretary Bethel for the opportunity to print this interesting document in full.

Your Committee on Education have devoted a very considerable portion of the time since their appointment to a survey of the relation of High School students to the business community. The question is one of great importance to pupils, parents and teachers -- it is representative in an educational sense, and it forms the basis of our report.

Very little inquiry is required to develop the fact that the finished product of the High School has not been satisfactory to the merchants of the country. Broach the subject where you will -- in the smaller towns and cities or in the metropolitan centers of population, and you get the same unvarying undertone of complaint. The Wall Street Journal in one of its later editions comments on the High School situation as follows:

OUR INEFFIECIENT[sic] SCHOOLS —— “Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, the business men of this country, and especially of New York, will be compelled to take up the question of our inefficient schools. The article turned out by the present system, whether it has spent a year or so in the high school or even forms part of that three per cent which graduates, is wretched value for the money we spend.

Whether by the Gary system or some other does not greatly matter if only the children are taught spelling, sound elementary arithmetic and enough English composition to write an ordinary letter correctly. A contribution from a high school graduate of eighteen is submitted to the editor this morning. In two paragraphs about the length of this there are four errors in grammar and three in spelling, while the punctuation is purely accidental. And yet the stuff shows intelligence, and contains the germ of a thought.

Cant phrases are all too readily adopted with no real study of their meaning, and one of these refers to the individuality of the pupil and one of the teacher. In effect, this means that the teacher is to express his or her opinions upon all sorts of subjects, with an obvious effect upon the individuality of the child.

Children of school age have no opinions upon public questions which are worth developing, and all their time is required to receive a sound basis of teaching so that they shall afterward reap the true reward of education in the ability to teach themselves.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS -- The strength of this feeling is further evidenced by the silent, steady growth of the paid “Business College”, “Schools of Business”, and “Business Universities”, which have come up with the avowed purpose of supplying the shortcomings of the regularly organized institutions of the state.

The president of one of these paid institutions, which has occupied an honorable place in Cleveland for many years, writes in regard to hundreds of scholars who have come to him from the High Schools:

“During many years of experience, I have found High School graduates deficient in spelling, particularly in common every day words used in business. It is somewhat difficult to get them to improve in spelling because of their attitude towards the subject. Many of them consider it not important.

“The same attitude is found, though not so general, towards English composition, I find deficiencies in arithmetic, particularly in the application of per cent, interest, discount, and other home and office applications of these simple processes.

“I wish it could be enforced upon the High School students that this work in the high school is highly important. He should be impressed with the fact that when he has completed his High School course he has not entirely mastered the subjects he has been taking. He in prone to be to well satisfied with himself and his education.

“I would emphasize the importance of punctuality, concentration on the work in hand, courtesy towards parents, teachers and all associates. I would emphasize Ethics – (the science of human duty) as being one of the most important subjects of the High School course.

“Get the student to think right and his education will be advanced 50 per cent.”

WHAT IS THE REMEDY? The ‘wide prevalence of this opinion regarding the mercantile possibilities of the High School graduate seems to point to some general cause operating regardless of the individual industry, high intellectuality and devotion to duty found in so many local faculties.

Is not this to be found for the most part at least in the persistent immobility of general educational ideals? Things are changing now -— but the “LITTLE Red School House” is still a fetish to conjure by on the political platform.

The distinctively academic High School with its oratorical graduate representative, pointing out the future of the nations has only just passed on to make room for the technical, recreational and vocational High School of the future.

The Latin and Greek “deadline” college so long the bulwark of our higher learning, is slowly getting ready to turn over some of its prerogatives to the Polytechnic School, the Applied Science School and to the coming endowed institute for exhaustive research into conditions effecting the physical and moral advancement of the race.

Yes -— educational ideals change slowly. The junior High School or its equivalent transfer of grades from the elementary to the High School chain, was outlined twenty-five years ago by the then leading educator of the country, but these changes are, only now tardily wheeling into the general educational line. But the change is here. The battle against time-worn error is won.

The elementary grades transferred can be put in charge of the question of common school deficiencies in spelling, composition and similar shortcomings, and every prospective High School graduate can be called on to prove his standing in such matters best at this point.

SOME SUGGESTIONS -- In the investigation of our subject it has seemed evident that there is a need for greater emphasis on the established studies of Bookkeeping, Business Law and Banking, both for boys and girls. Women are going to take higher work in the future, and they should be prepared for the advance. Military Drill in the schools is surely coming, and with it will follow the uniform for boys. An uniform is a self—imposed public dedication of the wearer to order, courtesy, respect for superiors, regard for the commonwealth. In the opinion of your committee, a uniform, modest school dress worn by all pupils, would be an advance for the girls. This is now a requirement in some of the highest class private paid schools and it is an efficient curb to the tendency of the wealthier pupil to overdress far beyond the possibilities of her associate of moderate means.

And now our review of suggestions for the improvement of the High School has left us yet to consider, Courtesy to Teachers, Parents, Associates -- Self—control, Self-reliance, Good Judgment, Psychology of Manner in Business and Social Life, Respect for the Dignity of Labor, Closer Co-operation between School and Family.

Few of these would require any special addition to the curriculum. The greater part, by talks from the platform, could be woven into the atmosphere of the High School pervading the whole as daily living actualities and receiving, if possible, same recognition in the scheme of markings of the institution.

The City of Lakewood is fortunate in having now in the process of making, under most exceptional circumstances, a million dollar High School which will render possible many of the ideals which we have imperfectly outlined here and which will give us in any event an institution which we can proudly compare with anything of the kind in the country.

71:12
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL
(Buildings under Construction)
Lakewood Press July 11, 1918 Pg.1

R.L. Short, director of high schools, gives out important information regarding plans for the three new buildings that are under construction on an eighteen-acre tract on Bunts Road. A cosmopolitan high school with a group plan of buildings is provided, in which pupils may pursue almost any subject they desire. Mr. Short says these three new buildings will give opportunity for a curricula that will afford Lakewood pupils advantages in educational fields “not surpassed in any other city”.

Space will be provided in the three buildings where pupils may not only receive instruction in Latin, French, Spanish, English, history, mathematics and the sciences, but in bookkeeping, shorthand, typewriting, accounting, salesmanship, commercial art, millinery, the trades, foundry work, drafting, pattern making, electricity, printing, agriculture and other vocations.

Military drill will be included as a requirement for graduation and many girls have applied for uniforms.

The census just completed shows there are 1,300 more children of school age in Lakewood than last year, when the buildings were so crowded that 1,500 pupils attended school but four hours daily. The three new buildings will provide accommodations for the larger enrollment expected next fall.

In the main building, academic and commercial subjects will be taught. The boys’ gymnasium also will be in this structure.

The second, to be known as the girls’ building, will have a gymnasium and rooms for teaching cooking, sewing, millinery and art, the third building, trades and technical subjects will be taught.

71:13
BOARD OF EDUCATION
(Mrs. A.B. Pyke fills Vacancy)
Lakewood Press August 15, 1918 Pg.1

The four members of the Board of Education filled at the regular meeting on Tuesday night the vacancy that was created in June by the resignation of Mrs. C. Belle Graber. Mrs. A.B. Pyke, 1185 Andrew Avenue, was the unanimous choice for the position. At the July meeting a petition, signed by 600 voters was presented, asking the appointment of Mrs. M.D. McIntyre, 1267 Lakeland Avenue, a former teacher in the Lakewood schools. At that meeting a communication was also received, signed by Mrs. Waitt, as chairman of the executive committee of the Woman’s Suffrage Party of Lakewood, suggesting the appointment of Mrs. Pyke, “or some one equally as good”. Later a formal petition in favor of the election of Mrs. Pyke was circulated in Lakewood and was presented at the board meeting on Tuesday night.

There was no delay on the part of the four members in making the appointment Tuesday night. Whether any preliminary caucusing has been held was not disclosed, but the indications were that the remaining board members had informally reached an agreement in advance of the meeting. After the vote was taken, notice was sent to Mrs. Pyke, and a few minutes later she appeared and took her seat at the board table, filling the vacancy that had existed since June. The new member was cordially greeted by the old members and the other board officials. The oath of office was administered by the president, which she signed. With this formality Mrs. Pyke assumed the duties of her new office, listening attentively to the routine of a dry audit of bills and the presentation of reports; she offered no resolution herself at her first session. Aside from the election and induction of the new member into office, the board meeting was unusually uninteresting, being confined strictly to routine business.

The election of Mrs. Pyke will be received with entire satisfaction by all parties in Lakewood. Wile there had been some discussion as to the filling of the vacancy by the election of a man, everyone will feel that the women were entitled to a representative on the board and all will agree that an excellent choice has been made. Mrs. Pyke has been an active, enthusiastic and forceful worker in the cause of woman’s suffrage in Lakewood and she has been conspicuous in all matters pertaining to civic welfare and war activities in which Lakewood women have been so notably featured.

71:14
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL [4]
(Uniform dress for girls made compulsory)
The Lakewood Press September 5, 1918 page 8.

A long farewell, to silks and satins and flimsy blouses. Enter patriotic conservation in the guise of dark cloth skirts and white middy blouses.

The girls of Lakewood High School are not quite unanimous in approval of this edict but resolutions recommending that girls wear simple costumes have been passed by the Lakewood school board.

“I think it is a good thing,” one hears when many of the girls are questioned. “I have usually worn a serge dress to school, anyhow. But of course a bunch of girls who like to wear georgette waists and high heeled slippers don’t like it. And that is just why it is so good - it will help to do away with all the silly competition and Jealousy.”

Such is also the idea of the school board R. L. Short, principal of the high school, said:

“We want to help them conserve, to save as much cloth and money as possible. We want to get away from the party dress idea. Probably the “butterflies” won’t like it, but I think the majority are in sympathy.”

But that is not the worst, the girls say. Rumor, denied as a “dream” by Mr. Short, has it that the board at first contemplated requiring that girls wear their hair in braids down their backs.

Six hundred girls in the sewing department of the high school, Mr. Short, said, are to devote half of their sewing time this year to war work in co—operation with the Red Cross.

Opening of the new Lakewood High School on September 30, will in effect be a reunion of former West Technical High School teachers of Cleveland, with their former principal, Robert L. Short, now Lakewood High School director.

West Tech teachers who have resigned to accept positions in Lakewood are H. D. Shaw, Mark L. Hobbs, Jean Garribrant, Ellen Van Fleet, Frederick Wood, William Huhn, Nettie Torrence, Frank Porter, Catherine Ryan and Miss Florence Somers. Elizabeth Smith, librarian at West Tech, has also gone to Lakewood school.

Ada B. Beckwith, assistant supervisor of art in the elementary schools of Cleveland goes to Lakewood as supervisor of art.

Acting superintendent Jones of Cleveland says that a sufficient number of new teachers have been obtained to meet the needs of the fall semester. Jones believes that under the new salary schedule Cleveland will be able to get and hold teachers in the future.

While the new High school building will not be ready for occupancy until the end of the month, school opened in all the grades on Tuesday, with an unusually heavy registration. Superintendent G. P. Lynch said yesterday that he did not expect to get the figures compiled until next week, but he was satisfied there was a large increase in all the grade schools,

The old high school building on the east side of Warren road has been converted into an annex for the Grant grammer school across the street and it is already in full to overflowing. Superintendent Lynch is retaining his office in this building and it is the office of the Lakewood board of education. Principal L.S. Short, the new head of Lakewood high school has temporary offices in the Warren road school until his quarters in the Bunts road school building are ready.

Latest reports are that it is doubtful if the new high school building can be ready for use on September 30, as announced, although the contractors are rushing the job and the school officials are straining every nerve in order to start high school work as soon as possible. Many Lakewood high school students, it is reported, are profitably and patriotically employed in the month of September in farming in Cuyahoga and nearby counties.

71:15
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL [5]
(Military Training for Boys)
The Lakewood Press September 12, 1918 page 7

Three thousand high school boys in Cleveland blossomed out this week in uniforms, consisting of trench caps, blouses, leggings and tan shoes. They are members of the first class to receive military instructions in the public schools of the county. Owing to the delay in opening the Lakewood high school until the end of the month, it will be several weeks before Lakewood street boys are seen on the streets of this city in their new uniforms.

By an arrangement with a large Cleveland store, these uniforms are bought through the school department at wholesale prices, $21.85 each. This is less than the cost of civilian clothes of the same quality in these days of the high cost of living.

The opening of schools and colleges is giving Cleveland this week the aspect of a great army cantonment. Practically all students in the higher grades will be in uniform of military cut and color; in three weeks, Lakewood, with its large quota of high school students, will make a similar appearance. Some are wearing the drab of the army and others the forest green of the home defense and coats of English cut. Uniforms of juniors and sophomores and seniors in all the high schools of the county were selected according to the preference of the authorities in the various schools and differ slightly in general appearance.

Regular, old—fashioned pants of the cut, the blue—clad soldier of twenty years ago was wont to wear, have been selected by the Lakewood school officials. Cleveland high school boys are wearing the natty suits of forestry green cloth. It includes breeches, flannel shirt, canvas leggings and overseas cap on which are the letters showing the school the wearer attends. Cleveland Heights boys wear similar uniforms, with wrapped leggings. The Western Reserve and Case School and other colleges designated by the government as training camps, are furnished with the regulation army uniform of olive drab, insignia on collar, indicating the reserve officers’ training.

Lieutenant F. V. Case, adjutant to the chairman of Mayor Davis’ War Advisory Board, has sent instructions to Captain Shute, who will have charge of the drilling of the Lakewood high school boys. Mayor Cook has promised to look after the lighting of the grounds to be installed. This drill started Tuesday night and will be held two nights each week hereafter.

Lieutenant Buescher will assist the drilling General Crowder informs the War Board that the men who are taking the preliminary training at the high schools are two months ahead of the regular select service men, and many non-commissioned officers will be picked from these men. The boys at the outset are drilled in the salute, squads right, squads left, and similar orders.

The boys are entering into the new drilling with much enthusiasm and military ardor. In short time it is predicted that the Lakewood high school students will present a military appearance, of which all our citizens may be proud.

71:16
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL [6]
(Opens October 7)
Lakewood Press September 19, 1918 page 7

The date for the opening of the new Lakewood. High School on Bunts Road will be Monday, October 7. At least that is the official date, fixed by the board of education, at its meeting last week. It had been hoped the new building might be ready for occupancy on September 30, but reports indicated that the later date is the earliest possible time that can be fixed.

Quarters for future board meetings will be arranged in the small building on Warren Road, on the west side of the street, formerly used for the manual training classes, on the site of the Grant school lot. The old high school building has been converted into an annex for the Grant School.

Superintendent C.P. Lynch has moved his offices across the street in the same building with the new quarters of the school board. Principal L.H. Short of the high school is retaining his temporary offices in the old high school, but will move into the new building as soon as it is completed.

Detailed plans for the opening of the new high school will come up at the next meeting two weeks hence.

71:17
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL [7]
(Pupils wear military dress)
Lakewood Press October 3, 1918 page 7

At the new Lakewood High school, which will open October 7, pupils in the three upper classes will wear uniforms.

The girls will be clad in middy blouses and dark blue skirts, and the boys will wear a khaki costume similar to that adopted by the Cleveland board of education.

The uniforms are less expensive than civilian clothes”, said. Supt. Lynch, "They will do away with rivalry in dress and put all on a level while in the school room.”

71:18
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL [8]
(Standard studies)
Lakewood Press November 21, 1918 page 1

The new high school in Lakewood is a vertiable hive of intellectual, physical and mechanical industry. The loss of time incurred by the imposition of the “Flu” ban is a serious handicap which the faculty is most desirous of overcoming during the remainder of the school year. Principal Short on Tuesday informed The Press representative that the pupils generally were co—operating with their instructors will this end in view. The essentials of the curriculum will be fully covered by the 13th day of June, providing only one week’s vacation is granted at Christmas and no vacation in the spring.

What The Press particularly desired to know was whether the work done in the high school was really up to standard requirements in the broad field of secondary school education today. The statement has been made that the graduates of our school were not admitted to, the leading colleges of the country without examination and conditions. Principal Short contradicted this by the assertion that our high school graduates are admitted, on certificate without question, without examination and without conditions into the colleges included in what is known as the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. This association includes such well known colleges and universities as Michigan, Ohio State, Oberlin, Western Reserve, Case and Purdue.

Occasionally a student desiring to enter Cornell or Boston Technical school must take on some special line of preparation, and must notify the principal of his purpose, for the reason that there are not enough pupils desiring that particular course to warrant the formation of a class and the appointment of an instructor.

The curriculum in the new high school adds five hours in the electives and three hours in required study over the course in force last year. More intensive work is also insisted upon in every subject, especially in the academic courses leading to college entrance. No classes in German are conducted this year because there is no demand. Last May, when the question was submitted to the students in anticipation of the needs of this fall, only one indicated a desire to study German. The classical and scientific courses of study are not as popular today as they a generation ago. Technical and commercial courses are much in demand and for these ample provision is made in Lakewood high school. For the purpose of commerce in the world today modern languages are a necessity. In the high school enrollment throughout the country forty-eight per cent consist of Freshman, or first year students. The other fifty-two per cent is found in the second, third and fourth years of the course. This indicates the present trend of affairs under which boys and girls are drafted into industrial occupations at the end of one year, or at most two, in the high school.

A survey of the new high school showed the work of completion to be rapidly nearing the end. Toilet facilities are now up to the legal standard in quality and capacity, and will soon be more than adequate for 1,800 students. Drinking fountains are in place, individual lockers are being installed and every arrangement is made for the comfort of the students.

The cafeteria is under the management of the domestic science department and although working under some temporary drawbacks is greatly appreciated by the student body.

The workshops for the manual training department are not yet put to full use, because power lines have not been connected with the building by the Electric Illuminating Company. What the corps of teachers may be able to accomplish with the youth of Lakewood when the new school is finally finished and fully equipped is a matter of speculation. But certainly the faculty includes representatives of good standing from many of the best colleges in the country. The taxpayers have a right to look for maximum results in view of the large amount of money invested in property, equipment and salaries.

The Press believes that the end of the current school year will fully justify not only the necessary financial outlay, but the broadened policy of the board of education as well as the hopes of the parents and people of Lakewood generally.

71:19
LAKEWOOD HIRES NEW SCHOOL HEAD
(Springfield (Mass.) Assistant Superintendent to Run System.)
Lakewood Post (1926?)

Lakewood’s Board of Education reached last night into the school system of Springfield, Mass., and took a young man to become superintendent of Lakewood schools.

The appointee is Julius E. Warren, now assistant superintendent of the Springfield schools. He is 38, married and is the father of two children.

Warren’s term of office will begin Sept. 1. He succeeds C.P. Lynch, whose resignation takes effect at the end of the present school year.

The board also announced that Claude P. Briggs, assistant superintendent and principal of the high school, would be given additional responsibilities in connection with the junior high schools.

Warren was graduated from Dartmouth college in 1910 and received a master’s degree from Columbia university in 1923. Positions he has held in the educational field include the following:

Supervising principal of Brattleboro (Vt.) high school and supervisor of elementary schools.

Principal of Gloversville (N.Y.) high school and later superintendent in that city.

Assistant superintendent of Springfield schools, which have an enrollment of 25,000, about twice that of Lakewood schools.

Warren has taught in Yale university’s school of education and has done editorial work for educational publications. He has contributed to educational magazines.

Warren’s father was Julius E. Warren, sr., once assistant commissioner of education for the state of Massachusetts.

The following resolution regarding the Mort plan was unanimously passed by Lakewood school board Monday night:

Resolved, that the Lakewood Ohio Board of Education, recognizing that adequate public school education for American children is a foundation stone for our form of government that must be preserved at all times, has carefully considered the recommendations made by the Ohio School Survey Commission appointed by Governor White, and commonly designated as the “Mort Plan”, and approves of said recommendations in principle; and be it further

Resolved, that the Board recommends that before raising the funds necessary to put such a plan into operation, a complete survey of the Tax laws of Ohio be made by an unprejudiced commission with the idea of framing a new code of tax laws for Ohio, relieving real estate, and spreading the necessary taxes over all classes of citizens who benefit by residence in the state.

The Board believes that the need of all the school districts in Ohio is so great that action should be taken as speedily as possible in accordance with the views expressed in the foregoing resolutions.

The Lakewood board of education should join with other school districts facing financial crises, in an appeal to the state legislature for temporary relief through diversion of gasoline tax funds, A. J. Hudson told fellow members at the regular board meeting Monday night.

“I would not like to see it made a permanent plan, but it seems to me that it is the immediate solution to the financial problem,” Mr. Hudson said. “It has been used for poor relief and it could be used for school relief until such a time as permanent legislation is enacted.”

Julius B. Warren, school superintendent, and board members attacked the plan suggested by a special citizens’ committee calling for non-payment of interest on the board’s bonded debt for 1934.

In a plan being studied by the committee, the board would use $175,000 due in interest to offset $l54,000 anticipated loss in revenue resulting from decrease in the tax duplicate of $17,000,000 for 1934.

“Such a plan would require the approval of every one of our bondholders and that would be impossible because they are scattered throughout the United States,” Mr. Warren said.

Board Member Snead favored levies on whisky, tobacco and cosmetics to obtain school funds.

The citizens’ committee is scheduled to hold a meeting in the Board of Education headquarters on Warren Road, Friday night.

The board approved a plan submitted by the Lakewood League for the Hard of Hearing to conduct hearing tests in all the city’s schools.

Lakewood teachers and other employees in Lakewood schools will receive their checks Friday in full payment for their December service. By the extension of the vacation period, the board of education payroll is cut 25 per cent this month, and 25 per cent again in the first month of 1934.

School Board Members-elect, Phillips and McDonald, were present at the meeting Monday night.

71:22
BOARD OF EDUCATION [3]
(Financial Problems)
Lakewood Courier December 28, 1933 page 1

A drive to secure payment of delinquent taxes will start this week in an effort to eliminate the large deficit that the board of education is facing the first of 1934. This drive was decided upon at a meeting of the citizens’ committee which has been studying the Lakewood schools financial problem, Tuesday night.

Press and pulpit, five minute speakers at club meetings and the membership of Lakewood Parent—Teacher association will be part of the drive.

As part of a long-range program the committee voted to urge Gov. White and the general assembly to support three relief measures.

One would be a law similar to the Illinois statute for appointing receivers of income—producing property on which taxes are delinquent. A second would be the diversion of tax receipts, in addition to a part of the gasoline tax money so diverted, into the public school fund. The third would be enactment of the bill to permit bonds to be issued for operating deficiencies.

The pay-delinquent-taxes campaign was strongly supported by School Board Member-elect T.F. McDonald and received unanimous support of the committee members, many of whom volunteered to become five-minute speakers in its behalf.

McDonald cited several instances of property owners well able to pay taxes, but who refused to do so. Delinquent school taxes total $650,000, Assistant Superintendent George W. Grill informed the committee.

71:23
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL [9]
Cleveland Plain Dealer May 10, 1940 page 1 and 16

A new principal of Lakewood High School and a new assistant superintendent in charge of business affairs were appointed last night by Supt. George A. Bowman with the unanimous confirmation of the Lakewood Board of Education.

Paul A. Rehmus, now principal of Grosse Point (Michigan) High School, was named principal of Lakewood High, succeeding John C. Mitchell.

Mitchell, Lakewood High head since 1928, will remain in the system as a special assistant on the superintendent’s staff “for research in secondary education,” Bowman announced,

Samuel S. Dickey, for the last 12 years principal of Lakewood Harding Junior High School, was promoted to assistant superintendent in charge of business affairs of the system, succeeding George W. Grill. Grill resigned last January 1 to accept a position with the Cleveland Clinic.

Rehmus will be “specially employed” during July and August and will start a three—year contract September 1. Mitchell will begin his new duties September 1, too, but Dickey will take over his new position as soon as schools close next month.

Supt. Bowman also announced the retirement of three veteran high school teachers, one junior high teacher, two elementary teachers and two nurses, as well as the appointment of four new high school andd one junior high instructor and one nurse.

Rehmus, the father of two boys and two girls, is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he now is completing work on a doctor of philosophy degree. Before becoming Grosse Point High principal he served in similar capacities at Battle Creek and Mount Clemens (Michigan) High Schools.

He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, national honorary scholastic fraternity, and Phi Delta Kappa, social fraternity. He is a former president of the Michigan Secondary School Principals Association and a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools executive committee, the National Honor Society committee and the National Secondary School Principals Association.

In the recent past Rehmus has been a lecturer in guidance and high school administration at the University of Pittsburgh, Purdue, Miami and the University of Illinois.

Dickey is a graduate of Wooster College and Columbia University, holding a superintendent’s diploma from the latter institution.

He went to the Lakewood system after serving as principal of Detroit Junior High School in Cleveland. Before becoming employed by the Cleveland Board of Education, he was superintendent of Berea schools.

Unusually active in club work, Dickey is a past president of the Lakewood Kiwanis Club and a director of the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce.

Mitchell joined the Lakewood system in 1920, coming from Boise, Idaho, to head the English department at Lakewood High School. He served in this position for only one year and then was promoted to assistant principal of the high school. He became principal in 1928.

Supt. Bowman announced that, at the close of school in June, James Collier, physics teacher since 1906 in the high school; Bartlett A. Gates, high school mathematics teacher since 1906, and Cassie M. Kelner, high school Latin teacher since 1909, would retire.

Also leaving the system after what Bowman called “years of distinguished service” are Harriet Braman, an elementary teacher for the last 21 years; Florence Robinson, an elementary teacher since 1914; Ethel Sutphen, a junior high school social studies teacher since 1908, and two nurses, Mrs. Elnora C. Kenaga and Charlotte Thompson, who have 17 and 20 years of service, respectively.

New teachers appointed to the high school faculty are Robert H. Esser, who received his bachelor of science and master of arts degrees from Western Reserve University and his doctor of philosophy degree from Ohio State University; Svend Theodore Gormsen, an Ohio State graduate now teaching physics and mathematics in Liberty, New York; Kent W. Leach, Oberlin College graduate now teaching mathematics and social science in Vandalia, Ohio, and James C. McCollum, graduate of Ohio State and holder of a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, now serving as general supervisor of vocal and instrumental music in Ross County, Ohio.

Roberta Peterson, now a cadet teacher at Harding Junior High was appointed to the regular junior high school staff and Lana K. Garrett was named a nurse.

The end of an epoch at Lakewood High School will be commemorated tonight at a dinner in the school in honor of the last three teachers still active who taught in the old Warren Road buildings before the present high school was built.

The three teachers, retiring this year are Miss Cassie May Kelner, head of the Latin department; James Collier, head of the physics department, and B.A. Gates, head of the mathematics department.

Other honor guests will be J.M.H. Frederick, former superintendent of Lakewood schools; Frank Lippert first principal of Lakewood High; H.W. Kennedy, former principal; F.F. Musrush, former art professor, and Miss Emily Hatpham.

The dinner will be a reunion for alumni of Lakewood High who were graduated during the years from its beginning, in 1885 to 1918, when the school moved into its present building. In the old building graduates say, there was the cozy, small-town atmosphere in which everybody knew everybody else, an atmosphere that has largely been 1ost under the modern system, and of which the three retiring teachers rate the last exponents.

Mrs. Samuel Allen of Hudson, acting president of the Alumni Association, conceived the idea. Chairman of the arrangements committee is Miss Charlotte Holden, recently elected treasurer of the Alumni Association.

Oldest known graduate expected is Mrs. Clara Thompson Warren, of Ada, 0., who was a member of the class of 1888. Among the “babies” of the reunion will be Philip W. Porter, news editor of the Plain Dealer, and Mrs. Louise Davis Bradley, assistant society editor of the Plain Dealer, both of whom were graduated in 1918.

The Lakewood School Board apparently is sidestepping the Women’s Liberation movement.

The opening session of the new year Monday at Taft Elementary School will break a 61-year-old tradition.

This will be the first year since 1911 that there is no woman on the board. The lone female contender for a seat last November - Mrs. Nancy Foreman - came in seventh in the nine-person race for three seats.

The women who have served in that period and the years they held office were Mrs. Belle Graber, 1912—17; Mrs. Bernice Pyke, 1918-31; Mrs. Nina Nase, 1931—33; Mrs. Jean Dawson, 1932-42; Mrs. G. P. Fullerton, 1938—46; Mrs. Etta Abernethy, 1946-59; Mrs. Dorothy Teare, 1959-71; and Mrs. Grace Kimball, 1962—71.

Women’s suffrage began nationally in 1920. However, the state ammended its constitution to provide for home rule in 1912.

It has been impossible to find absolutely authentic information about early schools and teachers, yet the recollections of so many of the old residents have been identical, that indications point to a reasonable assurance of the accuracy of the data.

Jonathan Parshall, a house-to-house carpenter, seems to have been the first teacher. In 1829, he lived on a small piece of land adjoining that of Mars Wagar. He was neither especially intelligent nor industrious, but considered himself fitted to teach the young. The cultural background of all New England pioneers influence them to educate their children. There were no schoolhouses yet built, so the first schools were in private homes. Jonathan Parshall used the back room of Mars Wagar’s home for his school,

In 1830, a log schoolhouse was built nearly opposite the James Nicholson house. The first teacher was a young woman from Olmsted. A one-room brick structure later replaced the log house, this in turn being made into a two-room school. The house was finally remodeled into a dwelling house used by the pioneer Walter Phelps.

At one time there was a log schoolhouse at the present Cannon Avenue, about where St. James Catholic School now stands, it was later replaced by a one-room frame schoolhouse.

Reverend Ricker and his daughter, Tina, kept a private school for little girls at the corner of what is now Detroit Avenue and Thoreau Road.

Some of the children living near the valley went to a small frame schoolhouse at Phinneys Corners, (There is now an old brick schoolhouse on the same site, the corner of Wooster end Center Ridge Roads.) Cord wood was piled high around the building, and several days supply was brought in at a time in order to have it dry enough to burn. The children crossed the river on an old grapevine bridge.

The Swedenborgian Church had a great influence on the whole community in the early days, and many of the pastors taught as well as preached. Among these minister—teachers were Reverend Asa Goodwin, Willard Day, Louis Mercer, and Reverend Leonard Foster. Mr. Glasier, father of Miss Jessie Glasier, taught one year. He was a young theological student at the time.

Leonard Taster taught one winter, and his brother Edwin, the next. They were hired by the Wagars, and lived with Francis Wagar. Other teachers were a Miss Turner, Miss Addie Johnson who lived at the Ezra Nicholson home, Ellen Calkins (said to have married Joseph Howe), and Arthur Russell, who gave up his teaching to enlist at the beginning of the Civil War.

The next date is fixed from the recollections of Lura Wagar Ashley, born October 10, 1843. As a child of six, she went to the school at the present Cannon Avenue. Her next school was a one-story brick building on Warren Road. It was the bell on this schoolhouse which Mars Wagar II tolled to announce the assassination of President Lincoln. In l861, Lura Wagar taught at the Cannon School, and the next year taught at the one on Warren Road. Her sister, Adah Wagar, also taught about this time. They each received twenty dollars a month.

About Civil War time, there was a small frame schoolhouse on the northeast side of the present Highland and Detroit Avenues. Miss Mary Alger was the teacher. The school district extended east to the Cleveland township line, and was composed mostly of farmers on Detroit Avenue.

The following notice was taken from the original records of “The Lake Shore Union Separate School District No. 1.” “Notice--the qualified electors of Sub-school Districts Numbers 6, 8 and 10 of Rockport Township will take notice--That on the 28th day of January A.D., 1871, at the Brick School House in Sub-Division Number six (6), an election will be held for the purpose of voting on the question of joining said THREE sub-school districts, and organizing the same into a Separate School District. Said election to be held on same day, between the hours of 1 o’clock and 4 o’clock p.m. Those in favor of said Separate School District voting “School”. Those opposing voting “No School”. Rockport--January 13, 1871. Signed, Alfred Elwell, Collins French, John Spalding, W.E. Clarke, Jas. Howe, M.C. Hall, P.E. Hall, George Krauss.” Seven or more of these notices were posted in the most conspicuous places within the proposed school district at the time dated. District No. 6 was East; No. 8 was Central; and. No. 10, West, on or near Detroit Avenue. This brought the district under the Ohio Common Schools Act passed April 9th, 1867. Of the twenty-seven ballots cast, all said “School”. From this time on records were kept.

On January 28th, 1871, the first board of education was elected by ballot. Alfred Elwell, receiving the most votes, was elected for a term of three years. Richard Fry with the next number of votes was elected for two years, and C.G. Calkins for one year. Richard Fry was chosen chairman of the board, Alfred Elwell, treasurer, and C.G. Calkins, clerk. From this time the name “East Rockport” seems to have been used. At the next meeting, February 7th, 1871, Richard Fry filed his bond for five thousand dollars as treasurer, and it was sent to the Auditor of Cuyahoga County. The work done by the board the year of 1871 included naming the buildings “East School”, “Middle School”, “West School”. Miss E.C. Preston was hired as teacher for Middle School, Miss Juliette Comstock for East School, and Miss Bessie Brown for West School. Rules for proper conduct were adopted, one of which was, “Scholars while in the schoolhouse or upon the school grounds will be required to abstain from rude and boisterous conduct, scuffling, and the use of profane and improper language”. Another was, “In addition to reading, spelling and writing, no scholar shall be required to study more than two of the following studies, geography, arithmetic and grammar.” The adoption of the use of Harvey’s Elementary Grammar and McGuffy’s Readers was made. A partition dividing the Middle School into two rooms was ordered. The authorization to Mr. Elwell for purchasing a half—acre of land on the south side of Middle School from Mrs. Anna Wagar for three hundred dollars was given. On September 18th, 1871, it was reported that a contract had been made with Archer Webb for the purchase of about a half—acre of land for thirteen hundred dollars.

That the board was thrifty is shown by the fact that for years they sold the apples from trees growing in the school yards and rented the pasture lands around the buildings. In 1871, James Kidney, who bought the land from the Nicholsons and latter sold it to James Wallace, paid ten dollars for the apples growing at East School. Before the next annual meeting, Richard Fry resigned, and W.E. Clarke was elected to fill the position. At the next election Adam Wagar was elected for three years and James Keyser for one year to fill the position of Alfred Elwell, who had resigned. The meetings were very frequently held in Joe Howe’s store. In 1872, a new West School was built, and the board sold the old one to C.R. Atwell for one hundred dollars. Miss Ada Osborn began to teach at West School on January 9th, 1873, but resigned March 24th because of ill health. Miss Sophronia Clague took her place. Other teachers that year were Miss Ida Bartholomew at East School and Miss Bessie Brown at Middle School.

On August 9th, 1873, the board voted to buy the building known as “The Good Templars Lodge” at the cost of one hundred and sixty dollars. This was built for the use of the Good Templars, probably the first organization of Rockport previous to 1850. For years it was simply called “The Lodge”. It was on the northwest corner of Hilliard Road at its intersection with Warren Road. Parties and dances were held there. The board usually met there, from that time until the large school was built. In 1874, we find new members James Cannon and O.W. Hotchkiss on the board. A most important action was taken August 17th, 1874, when it was voted to hire Mr. S.P. Merrill for a “Higher School” at a salary of sixty dollars a month. Other teachers that year were Miss Juliette Comstock at East School, Miss Bessie Brown at Middle School, and Miss E.C. Preston at West School, each receiving forty dollars a month. The Higher School began that year on September 14th. We have been told that pupils attending this Higher School carried their lunches with them in pails. The boys wore jeans or homespun clothes made by their mothers, and home knitted socks. “Anthony over” was the favorite game. In November, 1874, Miss Nellie Amidon was appointed to teach at Middle School in place of Miss Bessie Brown. The teachers for 1875 were S.P. Merrill, Middle School, Higher Department; Miss C.E. Ackerman, Middle School; Miss Juliette Comstock, East School; and Miss Carrie Thatcher, West School.

A new board member in 1876 was Edwin Andrews. Teachers that year were E.N. Dodge, Middle School, Higher Department, at sixty dollars a month; Anna Wagar, Middle School, at thirty dollars; Mary Calkins, East School, at thirty dollars; and C. Hotchkiss, West School, at thirty—five dollars.

In 1877, the name of Ezra Nicholson appears on the board. Teachers that year were Miss Kate Southard, Middle School, at thirty—five dollars; J.F. Morton at Middle School, Higher Department, at sixty dollars; Miss Elmina Phillips at East School, at thirty—five dollars; and Mrs. J.C. Cannon, West School, at thirty—five dollars. That year it was voted to pay each of the janitors one dollar a week.

The teachers in 1878 were Juliette Comstock at East School, Kate Southard at Middle School, and A.A. Cannon at West School. Each received forty dollars a month. Eliza Clapp Glasier, taught at the Higher Schoo1 for sixty dollars.

A new name on the board, in 1879, was that of Silas Gleason. Important actions were taken that year. Ezra Nicholson was selected by the board to get plans and estimates for a two-room school on the Middle School site. At the next meeting he presented plans by Coburn and Barnum, architects, which were adopted. It was voted at this meeting to notify William Maile that one hundred thousand bricks would be needed at a price not to exceed four dollars per thousand, delivered. At a later meeting, the architects were directed to make new plans and specifications. Several bids were received, and contracts were finally given to Latimer and Clements for mason work and material ($2,475.00), and to E.A. Cass for carpenter work and materials ($2,044,00). The work on the new school must have started at once, for at a meeting in August the treasurer was instructed to make payment to both contractors. At this meeting an additional forty—two dollars was allowed the mason-contractor for cutting the name “East Rockport Central School” and the year “1879” and for a stone cap for same. It was voted to sell the old building to the mason-contractor for fifty dollars. The board accepted Mr. James’ proposition to furnish the stone from his quarry for twenty dollars for the inscription.

At a meeting held August 25th, 1879, Mr. S.H. Herriman was hired as a teacher of Central Higher School and Superintendent of Schools at seventy—five dollars a month, to begin when the new school was ready for occupancy. Other teachers that year were Miss Carrie Woodbury at East School, Miss Myra Cannon at West School, and Miss Kate Russell at Central School, each at thirty—three dollars and thirty—three cents a month. The name “Middle” was changed that year to “Central”.

In 1880, the board voted to increase the number of members to six. New board members were S. Gleason, S.S. Hutchins, Archer Webb, Noble Hotchkiss and Lewis Nicholson. The board appointed L.D. French, Superintendent of Buildings. The Superintendent of Schools was directed to promote such pupils from the primary school to the grammar school “as shall be found suitably advanced in study”, It was while the new building was being built that the “Lodge” was used as a school. That year a teacher’s committee was appointed to confer with the Superintendent of Schools. Teachers elected were S.H. Herriman, Superintendent, T.D. Oviatt as assistant at Central School, Miss Kate Russell at Central School, Miss Kate Ellett at East School, and Miss Myra Cannon at West School. Mr. Herriman’s salary was the same, T.D, Oviatt and Miss Ellett each received thirty—three dollars and thirty three cents a month, and Miss Russell and Miss Cannon were paid thirty-five dollars a month each. A rule was adopted that year that, under the direction of the Superintendent, every pupil must take part in rhetorical exercises twice each term unless prevented by protracted illness.

On February 2nd, 1881, the board met in the new school house, and nearly all their meetings were held there from that time except a few held in the “Lodge”. That year lightning rods were placed on the buildings, and the salaries of the teachers at Central School and West School were raised to forty dollars. Teachers that year wore Miss Myra Cannon at Central School, Miss Carrie Brown, West School, Miss Ella Hull, East School, Mr. Herriman, Superintendent, and Miss Sarah Alexander assistant teacher.

The year, 1882, saw two new board members, D.A. Wagar and P.S. Clampett. That year it was voted to have janitors furnish their own kindling wood, but gave them three dollars a year extra for it. On June 5th, 1882, Mr. William L. Lippert was elected Superintendent of Schools. Teachers that year were Miss Carrie Brown, Miss Sarah Alexander, Mrs. M.M. Gleason, and Mrs. W.D. Pudney. Salaries were out to thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents and thirty—five dollars, per month. The board adopted the use of Ray’s Practical Arithmetic, Eclectic History, and German with grammar in the High School. The request by the East Rockport High School for the use of the organ for an entertainment was granted. The offer of the Rockport Dramatic Association of seventy dollars for the use of the “Lodge” was accepted.

Mr. Lippert and his teachers were re-elected in 1883. This was the last meeting recorded in the clerk’s book, but the treasurer’s ledger gives the names of teachers. In 1884, Miss E. Alexander took the place of Mrs. Gleason. In 1885, Mr. Lippert and his teachers were re-elected. In 1886 and 1887, the teachers were Mr. Lippert, Miss Carrie Brown, Mrs. W.D. Pucney, Miss Florence Beebe and Miss May Tegardine.

In the fall of 1888, Mr. Charles J. Weeks was elected Superintendent. His teachers that year and the next were Mrs. W.D. Pucney, Miss Carrie Brown, Miss Florence Beebe and Miss May Tegardine.

In the fall of 1895, Mr. J.M.H. Fredericks was elected superintendent. New teachers previous to that date were Mary Hutchin, Emily Cain, Ellen Wagar, Belle Tegardine, Anna Walling, Lucy West, J.M. Durnell and J.O. Gordon.

New teachers from 1895 to 1900 included Bertha Clark, Emily Harpham, G.W.
Jenkins, Emma Morell, Maud Mullaly, Margaret O’Connor, W.A. Putt, Elsie Rose, F.B.Rupp, Bertha Sears, Josie Sook, Jennie Thomas, Mary Venable and Bertha Wagar. Substitute teachers during this period were the Misses Maud and Kate Tegardine, Miss Sibel Reed, Miss Grace Nicholson and Miss Bessie Baker.

The chapter in detail closes with the year 1900. Since that date three men besides Mr. Fredericks have served the city as Superintendent of Schools: Mr. Charles P. Lynch, Mr. Julius E. Warren and Mr. George A. Bowman. Since the day in 1885, when the eighteen-year-old Mary Hutchins, first and that year only graduate of East Rockport, received her diploma from her future husband, Mr. Charles J. Weeks, there have been five other high school principals: Mr. J.M.H. Fredericks, Mr. Herbert W. Kennedy, Mr. Robert L. Short, Mr. Claude P. Briggs and Mr. John C. Mitchell.

The old East Rockport building, started in 1879, is now headquarters for The Board of Education, the Purchasing Agent and school headquarters staff. Old Lakewood High School, named Wilson School when the present High School was built, is now Warren Road Community House.

The present High School is a modern, well equipped million dollar plant. There are three modern Junior High Schools: Emerson, Harding and Horace Mann. The ten grade schools are named Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Harrison, Hayes, Lincoln, Madison, McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft.

71:28
ROCKPORT TOWNSHIP:FIRST SCHOOLMASTER
Story of Lakewood by E.C. Lindstrom pg. 23, 24 (Ent.) cf D.A.R. material

Jonathan Parshall might have made the hall of pioneer fame had he not been so everlastingly lazy. He came to Rockport about 1829 and bought an acre of land from Mars Wager. The very fact that he wanted only an acre - scarcely a decent backyard for most of the pioneers - is a tip-off to his character.

Parshall, however, never posed as a farmer. He was a house carpenter by trade. Since most of the pioneers did their own building, he had plenty of time to loaf.

Quite a few pioneers had drifted in by this time and everyone thought it would be nice to have a school. Parshall knew letters and ciphering, had little to do and so became the schoolteacher.

Classes were first held in a back room of the Wagar home, that being most centrally located. Pupils progressed so slowly that parents learned, before the end of the year that as a teacher Parshall was a good carpenter.

The following year a log schoolhouse was built opposite the Nicholson home and “a lady from Olmstead” was imported to teach. Parshall was fired, had some trouble with Wager over payment for his acre of ground, and quit the community.

This first schoolhouse, like others that were built later, was a one-room affair with a big fireplace at one end into which the big boys heaped wood in cold weather. Those in the front rows toasted, and those in the rear wore their coats.

Benches were split logs, smoothed down, and had no backs. The teacher sat on a platform and called on each pupil in turn to come up and recite.

These were strange schools indeed. They had no blackboards and not even bells, When time came for “books to take up,” the teacher rapped on the door with a stick and it was up to the pupils to be within hearing distance.

Teachers generally traveled from neighborhood to neighborhood, teaching only as long as the community school money held out. It was the custom for the teachers to “board around” at the homes of all the pupils.

Since school lasted only two or three months each year, learning was unavoidably slow. Nor were many of the teachers trained in pedagogy. Nothing was taught besides reading, writing and arithmetic. In addition, boys usually quit going altogether as soon as they were old enough and big enough to be of real use on the farm. Great stress was placed on “ciphering” but the pupil who was a good speller took the highest honors. Spelling bees were held frequently and participated in not only by pupils but by adults too. These were primarily social events, and were held in the school-house.

On December 19, 1885, East Rockport became Lakewood Hamlet and at a meeting of the Board of Education held March 5, 1900, the following resolution was adopted: “That whereas, by virtue of a resolution adopted by the Board on the 2nd day of March, 1871, this district was named and designated, The 1st Separate School District of Rockport, and whereas, such name is misleading by reason of the fact that there are two other special districts in Rockport Township bearing somewhat similar names, therefore be it resolved, that said Resolution adopted on the 2nd day of March, 1871 be and the same is hereby rescinded and repealed, and be it further resolved that here and after the passage of this Resolution this School District shall be known and designated as Lakewood Hamlet Special School District.” The School Census of this new district numbered 215. That was in 1900. The total number of children of school age in the district at the present time (1936) is in excess of 13,000 of which approximately 10,500 are enrolled in the public schools, the remainder in private and parochial schools or at work on school working permits. So far as can be ascertained, every child of school age is in some approved educational institution or accounted for in some legitimate manner. The small buildings which served the district at the beginning of the century have been increased in number and size.

71:29
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL - 1917 [11]
Story of Lakewood - E.G. Lindstrom pg. 93-94

This building was not ready for occupancy until October, 1918, when approximately two thousand children from the seventh to the twelfth grades, inclusive, filled the corridors and class rooms to overflowing. Lakewood High School, which now houses only the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades, and a few post graduate students, has an enrollment of 2,700 in 1936 and is one of the great high schools of Ohio and the nation. The Main Building, housing academic activities and the principal’s office suite; the women’s building, housing the school cafeteria, the hospital, the music classes, the home economic classes and. other activities in which presumably girls are most vitally interested; and the men’s building, housing the shop, foundry, commercial departments, school book store, and some of the study halls, were all occupied at the same time. Since then, the Briggs Swimming Pool, named in honor of Claude P. Briggs, principal from 1920 to 1927, has been added to the school plant; also the greenhouse, the grandstand on the athletic field, and the connecting corridors between the women’s building and the Main Building and between the women’s building and the men’s building.

Lakewood High School has been served by a notable series of principals. Mr. Lippert, Mr. Weeks, and Mr. Frederick, previously referred to as superintendents, had also been, in their time, principals of the High School. Mr. Frederick was succeeded in the principalship by Mr. Herbert W. Kennedy, whom many of the older prominent graduates of the high school still refer to lovingly as “Mike” Kennedy. In 1917, Mr. Robert L. Short, Principal of West Technical High School in Cleveland, was employed to serve as “Director of High Schoo1s” and upon the resignation of Mr. Kennedy in 1918, Mr. Short became the principal of the High School, holding that office until May 5, 1920. For the remainder of that school year, Mr. B.A. Gates served as the Acting Principal of the school. During the summer of 1920 the Board of Education and Superintendent Lynch conducted a nation—wide search for a worthy principal of schools which they believed could be made one of the great high schools of the nation. Their choice fell upon Mr. Claude P. Briggs of Rockport, Illinois, and he assumed the duties of the office in September of that year. Seven years later, almost to the day, he died very suddenly in the midst of making preliminary plans for the opening of school. He was succeeded by John C. Mitchell, then serving as Assistant Principal. Mr. Mitchell is still guiding the destinies of the school with the assistance of Mr. Robert L. Meeks, Assistant Principal, and Miss Lucy Helen Kimball, Dean of Girls.

71:30
BOARD OF EDUCATION [5]
(Board Members, 1881-1936)
Story of Lakewood - E.G. Lindstrom pg.98-100

Throughout its history, the Board of Education, which is the legislative body of the School District, has had among its members some of the most outstanding citizens of the community. Official records of the Board run back to 1871, at which time the members of the Board were A.M. Wagar, of the famous Wagar family, Alfred Elwell, and C.G. Calkins, who served as Clerk of the Board as well as member.

During the decade from 1871 to 1881, the official records indicate Board of Education service by the following persons: Dr. Richard Fry, for whom Fry Avenue was named; William E. Clark, James Keyser, C.W. Hotchkiss, James Cannon, who gave his name to Cannon Avenue; E.R. Andrews, of the famous Andrews family whose family names are perpetuated in Andrews, French and Virginia Avenues; Ezra Nicholson, whose contribution to the history of Lakewood is adequately treated in another chapter; Silas Gleason, S.S. Hutchins, Archer Webb, of the famous Webb family whose descendants are numbered among our prominent and useful citizens; and J.E. Canfield, Jr., who also served as Clerk of the Board.

The decade from 1881, to 1891 saw the repetition of some of the same names in the annals of the Board: John C. Hall, whose name was given to Hall Avenue; D.L. Oviatt, D.A. Wagar, D.H. Wagar, P.S. Clampett, John French, who was related to the Andrews family; Mark Thompson, Julius Sothern, T.C. Hall and J.C. Andrews, who also served as Clerk of the Board.

The concluding decade of the nineteenth century brought to the councils of the Board the good judgment of O.F. Lapham, E.O. Peets, Charles Greening, George Loveland, Dr. J.F. Hobson, Robert Welfare, U.W. Hird, who was treasurer of the Plain Dealer Publishing Company at the time of his death in 1936; William Prutton, C.K. Bitthoffsky, O.B. Hannan, and Maurice Welfare, who also served as Clerk of the Board. Dr. Hobson was a famous family physician and good citizen of the community for more than forty years. Maurice Welfare came to the United States as manager of Richard Mansfield, the famous English actor, and later became manager of the Cleveland Opera House and established a home in Lakewood.

During the early years of the present century, the Board records reveals the names of Otto C. Muelhauser, J.O. Gorden, and Frank R. Thrall, all of whom served not only as members but as Clerk of the Board. Also J.M. Wright, W.D. Pudney, George J. Baum, and John B. Coffinbury.

An outstanding group of people served the educational interests of the community around the year 1910. These gentlemen, Otto W. Carpenter, Jacob C. Hoffman, George F. Hart, Robert G. Curren and Frank M. Barton, adopted the resolutions which made Charles P. Lynch the Superintendent of Schools, an office which he held for nearly seventeen years. Mr. Carpenter was a well known life insurance man. Mr. Curren is frequently referred to as the “Lakewood Warwick” because of his long service as city solicitor and his activity in mayoralty campaigns. Mr. Barton was a famous publisher of religious books and magazines.

The members of the board who negotiated the purchase from Mrs. Bertha G. McMyler of the eighteen acres of land now comprising the campus of Lakewood High School and who were responsible for the construction of the school were Benjamin D. Fuller, David G. Jaeger, Mrs. Belle T. Graber, William F. Ulrich, Otto F. Leopold and A.G. Gibson. During this period Mr. P.T. Harrold served as Clerk of the Board, but was not a member.

The members who served from 1920 to 1930 made educational history. Frank
L. Sessions, Cleveland R. Cross, Mrs. Bernice S. Pyke, A.F, Allen, R.B. Robinette and Mrs. Mina L. Nase, achieved national prominence as the model school board. With only two negative notes recorded in the minute books during a ten year period these board members built three new junior high schools and later built annexes to all three; they built Taft, Hayes and Roosevelt elementary schools and a total of ten annexes to various elementary buildings; they built the swimming pool, the grandstand and the connecting corridors between buildings at the High School; they established the policy which the board has continued since to follow with respect to high school fraternities and sororities, compulsory vaccination, medical and dental services; they accepted Mr. Lynch’s resignation and employed Mr. Warren as his successor; and they unified the administration of the school system under the superintendent by changing the title of the Clerk of the Board to that of Assistant Superintendent of Schools.

Major John M. Snead served a four year term as member of the Board ending December 31, 1935. During most of these years he was the chairman of the Committee on Buildings and Sites.

The present members of the Board are T.F. McDonald, president; Morris H. Phillips, vice president; Mrs. Jean B. Dawson, Arthur J. Hudson and Melville W. Vickery.

71:31
BOARD OF EDUCATION [6]
(Expenditures, 1870-1936)
Story of Lakewood E.G. Lindstrom pg. 100-101

The earliest available financial records of the Board of Education date back to the school year 1870-1871 when the following appropriations were made:

For continuing schools, etc. $2,400.00
Buildings and Contingent purposes $3,900.00
Total $6,300.00

Following this appropriation, the five recorded teacher contract was made with Miss E.C. Preston to teach school for an indefinite time at the rate of $50 per month or $2.50 per day.

Some idea of the growth of Lakewood, educationally speaking, may be gained by comparing above figures with the budget for 1928, during which year a total of $l, 373,900.00 was spent “for continuing schools, etc.”. This figure included nearly a million dollars for salaries of teachers, and more than one hundred thousand for salaries of custodians, the remainder of the amount being spent for salaries of other employees, educational supplies, repairs, upkeep, etc.

The high water mark was reached in the calendar year 1930, when the total expenditures aggregated $2,057,449,84, of which amount $l,452,0l3.20 represented expenditures in the General (or operating) Fund for “continuing schools”.

The depression left its mark on education in Lakewood. Every effort was made to mitigate the severity of its effects on the personnel of the school system. For the school year 1931—32, the customary annual increments of $l00.00 per teacher per year were continued, but a three percent cut was made in all salaries. Thereafter the annual increments were suspended. During the following school year, an additional cut on a graduated scale, but averaging 14 per cent was made in all salaries. Also, all employees were required to take a two weeks payless vacation.

For the school year 1933—34, the same scale of percentage cuts was continued and a three weeks payless vacation in addition was decreed. In 1934-35 the percentage cuts were continued and one week payless vacation served to solve the financial problem along with the refunding of certain bond maturities. The school year was restored to its normal length of 38 weeks in 1935—36 but the percentage cuts remained in operation.

71:32
EAST ROCKPORT SCHOOL
Story of Lakewood. E.G. Lindstrom pg. 135
(From Cleveland Herald, May 15, 1876)

At the last monthly examination in the grammar grade of the Central school the following pupils stood 90 per cent, or more, in the branches in which they were examined: Thomas Walsh, Mary Hall, Belle Hotchkiss, Hester Hotchkiss, May French, Clinton Reiber, Jennie Bush, Nellie Maile, Lawrence Johnson, Walter Johnson, Fred Hall, Christie Maile, John Calkins, Chloe Howe, Ella Scovil, Jay Andrews, Owen French, Hattie Maile, Charles Murphy. The examination was entirely written and ten questions were submitted in each branch.

71:35
LAKEWOOD HIGH SCHOOL [13]
50th Anniversary - Lakewood High School
Paper by Miss L.T. Pascal

Any fine large plant that compels admiration excites interest. One desires to know the story of its development.

When one views the million dollar plant on Bunts Road, known as Lakewood High School, he sees one of the most modern and best equipped schools in Ohio. To trace the stages of its growth go to Warren Road where stand the three buildings successively outgrown by Lakewood High School.

In the small building, now occupied by the Board of Education, was the first high school in the present City limits. It was Rockport at this time and the name may still be seen on the front stone. The first class, graduated in 1885, consisted of one lady, now Mrs. C. J. Weeks of Warren Road.

In 1888 the name of the school was changed and Mr. C. J. Weeks became the first principal of Lakewood High School. At this time the small building was large enough for grammar and grade school pupils of central Lakewood.

As new streets were opened and settled a new building was necessary and in 1900, the high school moved into what is now the front portion of Grant School with Mr. H. W. Kennedy as principal.

The schools of Lakewood early earned an excellent reputation and in four years Mr. M. H. Frederich, the Superintendent of schools persuaded Lakewood to build a new high school. Like the Chambered Nautilus the high school moved to adjoining space where it outgrew its former walls. The new building was just across the street and is now the Wilson School. By the conservatives, the new building was a great extravagance. “It will never be filled,” they said. In a short time the technical department was crowded out and moved into the old Rockport building which became an annex. At the end of ten years, when every available space was occupied at double sessions, Mr. C.O. Lynch asked the people of Lakewood to build an adequate high school worthy of the city.

The present high school, the response to this request, was opened in 1918 with Mr. C. L. Short, Principal.

So rapid had been the increase in school population that the building was overcrowded at its opening. The classes were too large; there were not enough class rooms to form new classes. Recitations were accompanied by the whirr of machinery in the shops, giving teachers the sensation of being in a dentist chair. The teaching force was not large enough for supervisions of class, study and halls. It seemed for a time that the immense plant was developing into leaves and branches not bearing as much fruit as its imposing proportions promised.

The period of disappointment has passed. The relief afforded by the completion of the Junior High schools; the increase in teaching force; the raising of the standard; the closer supervision, under Mr. Briggs and two assistant principals are influences bringing efficiency and ideals and getting it in position to occupy the place it is equipped to fill.

In looking for a reason for the phenomenal growth of the high school we may charge it to the schools themselves. As early as 1905, people were attracted to this suburb by the excellence of the schools. The plant was in very favorable environment; the citizens of Lakewood headed by a Board of Education composed of broadminded public spirited men realized that good schools were the best investment they could make to increase the real worth and wealth of Lakewood. May we say that from the beginning the plant has been rooted in ideals.

School conditions in Lakewood at the time the hamlet was incorporated were of the country school capacity of that day. There were three schools in operation under township control -- a one-room school at the site of the present McKinley school, a one-room school at Garfield, with a four-room school where Grant school now stands, called Central, with three of the four rooms open to pupils. There were four teachers, besides the principal, who did his full quota of instruction.

Some years before for school purpose convenience, the township had been divided into two school districts--east and west. But for better education/efficiency this section was sparsely populated at the time--the two districts united in the support of one central school. This was located near the dividing line between the districts, at a point near Warren Road, where for a number of years the pupils in Rockport township met for study--two teachers being engaged in the work, with but one large school room between them.

Weeks was principal at the time of Lakewood’s incorporation, with headquarters at what is now Grant school. The high school perfected pupils in three grades, and Principal Weeks taught the high school classes. The high school work had been under Lippert, who preceded Mr. Weeks.

But soon after Lakewood was incorporated the village began to grow and school facilities proved inadequate, new structures were added and an effort put forth to keep pace in building expansion with the influx of pupils requiring educational training. Although but a quarter of a century has elapsed between its incorporation and the present day, the school facilities of Lakewood have been multiplied many fold and at the late election an expansion was authorized several times the total capacity of the hamlet’s facilities at the time it was organized. Today there are 123 teachers, 3743 pupils, nine schools, and class rooms in commission and provided for by proper legislation numbering 141. Following are the schools and data:

71:37
BUILDLING USED BY FIRST LHS STUDENTS ERECTED IN 1879; STILL IN SERVICE
By Margaret Manor Butler (no date)

Probably a few Lakewoodites who attended school here in the 1880’s could tell me the name and date on the building that housed our first high school students, but in questioning almost one hundred school children, parents, teachers and even Board of Education employees who pass it every day, I received the reply “What old building,” “What date?” Perhaps dates on old buildings in our community are very vital, but the history back of certain dates is intriguing. And how much we miss through our lack of observation.

This story concerns the brick building a short distance south of the Fire department on Warren road. Across the top of the building one can read East Rockport Central School and over the doorway the year 1879. Today it is headquarters for the Recreation department of the Lakewood Schools, where in and out of school, recreation programs are designed for better mental and physical development of our children and adults. Tiny feet scamper willingly up the steep steps after school hours and on Saturdays for an hour or two of “make—believe.” Adults too are included in dramatic instruction several evenings a week. It is a busy building where laughter holds sway and discipline is unnecessary.

It was not always thus: Back in 1871 when the first Board of Education was elected, the conscientious members established a set of rules which have a familiar ring. “Scholars while in the schoolhouse or upon the school grounds will be required to abstain from rude and boisterous conduct, scuffling and the use of profane and improper language.” At that time a one story brick building called “Middle School” occupied the present site. It was the bell on this school that Mars Wagar II rang so vigorously at the time of the assassination of Lincoln. It was here, he told me, he became school janitor at two dollars a week when he was only ten years of age. He recalled his favorite games “pom, pom pull away” and “duck on the rock,” and the thrill of smoking catalpa cigars in back of the school house when teacher was out of sight.

In 1874 a partition divided the room in two, and S. P. Merrill was employed as the high school teacher at $60.00 per month, the grade school teacher receiving $40.00.

The new school with its name changed from Middle to Central was started and completed in 1879. It was a four room structure built at an approximate cost of $4,700.00. (I can hear some of my readers sighing for the good old days). After much debate the Board of Education authorized the carving of the name East Rockport Central School and the date 1879 on the new building at a cost of $42.00 and also voted to accept the stone for the inscription from the quarry of a Mr. James at an additional cost of $20.00.

It was a combination grade and high school until Grant was built in 1899--it soon became too small and the High School across the street was dedicated with much pomp and ceremony in 1904. No one anticipated that the small community of East Rockport would grow to be the City of Lakewood in such a small time, and the new High School soon became overcrowded.

In 1918 Lakewood High was built on Franklin and the old High, renamed Wilson, took the overflow of pupils from Grant School. Wilson was torn down last month.)

Grant and Wilson, both more modern and with more space, relieved the old Central school of its original responsibility, but its sturdy structure precluded abandonment. It became the busy Board of Education where many policies were formed. A decision in 1881 raised salaries, and installed lightning rods on the roof. The next year the board cut salaries, but voted three dollars additional on Janitor’s wages if he furnished his own kindling. Weighty problems included discussion as to whether practical or theoretical arithmetic should be taught, or if it was wise to teach German in High School.

When larger quarters were found in Grant School, the Recreation department was given the old Central school. Gay voices still come from its open windows. It may be children quoting from a favorite play or “Mothersingers” bursting forth on a Thursday morn.

In the last fifty years of Lakewood High School, or East Rockport School as it was formerly called, six principals have governed its policies. At this time five of them are still living. Four of them are now making their homes in the city of Lakewood, and are here with us this very day. Each new administration has been a period of forward—moving activity. The history of the schools for fifty years is the history of Lakewood.

If you please, I will unroll the ribbon of time backwards and speak first of my predecessor, Mr. Claude P. Briggs, principal from 1920 to 1927. Mr. Briggs spared himself nothing--put the whole force of his body, mind, and will to make everyone have respect for himself and for his work and to become an excellent citizen. He worked unceasingly for a swimming pool for Lakewood High School and for the community of Lakewood. Finally he succeeded in getting money appropriated for it. His death, which came while he was principal, probably was caused by the strain of his work. He cannot be with us today, but his daughter and Mrs. Briggs are here and we do reverence to him in their presence.

The man who preceded him was R. L. Short principal from 1918 to 1920. He helped plan, build, and equip the Lakewood High School plant. It was his ambition to build the best Cosmopolitan high school possible with an especially well—equiped technical department. This school plant stands as a monument of Mr. Short’s ability to plan and to organize.

Preceding Mr. Short was Mr. Herbert W. Kennedy, principal of Lakewood High School from 1900—1918. During his years the high school had grown from a school population of seventy-five to nearly a thousand. While he was principal, Lakewood’s colors of purple and gold were adopted. Mr. Kennedy can be described as a four-square man. One of his students has said, ‘He is the finest man I ever knew.” Honest, straightforward--he as a marvelous teacher of mathematics and a friend to every deserving boy and girl. I want you to meet Mr. Kennedy, and show you appreciate all the fine work he has done for Lakewood people in his eighteen years of service.

Preceding Mr. Kennedy was Mr. J.M.H. Frederich, principal from 1895-1900, and superintendent from 1901-1910. Frederich had the privilege of planning for much of the early growth of Lakewood. When he came it was a tiny hamlet, just as large in territory as now, but small in population--a prosperous countryside of vineyards and fruit farms and truck gardens after the street car line was built Lakewood become a populous surburban community. During his administration, Lakewood High School three times outgrew its quarters, moving its from the old building now used as school headquarters, from there to Grant School, and thence to the present Wilson school across the street. For many years Mr. Frederich knew the name of every pupil in the schools. He believed that excellent teachers made an excellent school; therefore he selected them most carefully. By 1900 Lakewood schools had an excellent reputation and people began moving out to Lakewood so that their children might have the advantages that the schools afforded. After leaving Lakewood Mr. Frederich served as superintendent of the Cleveland public schools. I want you to greet this friend of Lakewood schools and builder of them Mr. J.M.H. Frederich.

Going back another ten years we come to a principal and superintendent who was known and beloved by two generations of young people--Mr. C.J. Weeks, principal and superintendent from 1888—1895. After a residence in the west he returned to Lakewood as principal of Garfield and one room at McKinley--that he could be superintendent, principal of the high school, and entire faculty. As a child in the first grade Miss Hobson says that she remembers being impressed with awe at Mr. Weeks as superintendent, but in later years she says she learned to know his wonderfully kind heart and delightful sense of humor—Mr. Weeks.

Turning back one more page in history we come to one I am sure you will delight to honor the man who was the first principal of Lakewood High School--the man who planned the first course of study leading to a diploma - the principal who conducted the first commencement. He now has a responsible position in the Cleveland Public Library, and goes to his work every day. He takes a course in Cleveland College every winter, and enjoys traveling by aeroplane. He has recently returned from a trip to Europe. Today, more than fifty years have passed since he came to Lakewood High School, we have the very great pleasure of meeting and honoring this cultured gentleman, Lakewood High School’s first principal during the years 1882—1888, Mr. Will Lippert.

The GrapeVine Bridge was the only means of crossing Rocky River in the vicinity of Hilliard and Riverside roads. It was swung between and from Mrs. George Mason’s farm, now “Rainbow Gardens” or “Riverside Gardens”, across the river diagonal to the west side of river. When the wind blew hard it would swing as a grapevine would in the wind. School children used this bridge to go Finney’s School at Finney’s Corners, now Center Ridge and Wooster Roads where an old brick school now stands. The present building replaced the little frame school house painted red. Big cords of wood were piled high in the yard and brought in enough to last a few days and dry out enough to burn.

The high school was on the west side of Warren Road (a more pretentious building. It stood just where the old brick school now stands. The Board of Education, I believe, now occupies it.

Emily Hathaway, afterwards was Mrs. James B. McCreary, also was the eldest daughter of Mrs. Philan Herrington-Hathaway-Mason, attended high school and walked from their farm on Riverside(Hogback Road)south of Hilliard Road at bend of road to school. Snow was high yet education was her aim and she did it, and lived to be over 90 years old. Where this bridge was located is now a part of Metropolitan park yet there it was a part of Mr. & Mrs. Mason’s farm.

The old “GrapeVine Bridge” was used by the children to go to school and also by grown ups to cross the river. This was, we are told (after much searching) and I believe this to be true, at the East end of the George and Philan Mason farm, zig-zagged across the river to the west side of the bank and then up a narrow path to the top of the hill. Mr. Mason built a bridge of his own later, wide and safe enough for his team to cross and this remained for many years.

To the high school on Warren Road the girls in pigtails, some perhaps in curls, gingham, perhaps calico, with pantalets, walked from farm homes, lunch pails in hand, all the distance in snow, rain and lots of it. The boys in overalls, hardly, jeans and home spun pants, mother made and coats, vests and shirts too. Socks, home-knitted and boots, leather ones.

More than one romance was begun in those school days. One I know was that of Emily Hathaway (daughter of Edmund & Philan Hathaway, afterwards Mrs. George Mason) and James B. McCreary, son of Richard G. and Lucinda H. McCreary. “Jim walked the distance, carrying Emily’s dinner pail, tin those days, and he of persistant type, she sweet and pretty, curly haired Emily. But Jim won Emily and when school days were over they were married.

71:40
RELICS TO BE A GIFT TO L.H.S.: HALL-MCCLURE COLLECTION OF BIRDS AND INDIAN ARTICLES OFFERED TO BOARD OF EDUCATION. (WITH TWO LETTERS FROM GEORGE C. HANSEN TO ARTHUR HALL AND E.A.MCCLURE)
Ca.1925

Lakewood high school may soon come into possession of the famous Hall collection of stuffed birds and Indian relics, first assembled by Matthew Hall, Lakewood pioneer, and developed by his daughter, the late Mrs. Ethel Hall McClure, whose death occurred recently.

Mrs. McClure’s husband, Dr. A. B. McClure, has been seeking an appropriate organization to whom the collection might be given, inasmuch as the building specially erected to house it at the rear of the McClure home on Detroit avonue has been leased.

Knowing of this situation, and knowing, also, that many colleges and universities were seeking to obtain the collection, George C. Hansen, president, and E. George Lindstrom, secretary, of the Lakewood Historical society, visited the meeting of the Lakewood board of
education Monday evening and presented the situation to the school board urging the board to accept the collection for the high school. The only condition to the acceptance is that a suitable place for housing the collection must be provided.

The board was very favorably inclined toward the proposal and referred the matter to proper committee for investigation and early report.

The collection is said to be the most complete of its kind, embracing all the forms of bird life peculiar to Ohio, and a large number of rare Indian relics. The value of the collection is above price. Its founder, Mr. Hall, owned extensive holdings in Lakewood and Hall avenue was named for him. Ethel avenue was named for his daughter, Mrs. McClure, and Edward street was named for his son.

Sometime ago I had the pleasure of a conference with you on your estate at which time I told you that Doctor McClure had arranged with us last spring to donate his splendid collection of birds, curios and relics to the Lakewood Board of Education, who had promised to make proper arrangements to care for them in a suitable manner so that the collection might be made a perpetual memorial to those who gave it.

The Lakewood Board of Education has not made the complete arrangements for the reason that we asked them to wait until we could arrange for such other persons who had collections of different sources who might be willing to contribute them to the City of Lakewood.

The Lakewood Board of Education is ready to proceed with our program as soon as we can tell them the amount and character of the space required.

When I talked with you, a suggestion was made by you, that you might have some things that would have either historical or educational value, but that you had not definitely made up your mind just how and when to dispose of it. Since our conversation I have been wondering if you are willing to tell me if you have anything that you are willing to donate to the City of Lakewood, and just what your donations would consist of.

I hope you will pardon me for unduly pressing the matter but you will appreciate the educational and historical value such things have and it is very desirous that the Board of Education begin upon a competent plan to take care of such donations as the generous citizens of Lakewood may care to contribute.

Within the next two or three months we want to make every effort to talk with everyone who may have anything that will fit with our plan.

May we not hear from you very definitely about your sentiments in the matter.

Very truly yours,
George C. Hansen
LG-Z Lot 11

Last spring, you will remember, Mr. Lindstrom and myself had a very pleasant conversation with you in reference to the Hall—McClure collection now in your home.

We understood you to say at that time that it would soon be necessary for you to vacate the property and that as soon as you did you wished to get rid of the collection and expressed the desire to give it either to the City of Lakewood or to the Lakewood Board of Education.

As officers of the Lakewood Historical Society we visited the Lakewood Council and the Lakewood Board of Education and both of these organizations heartily approved of the plan and the Lakewood. Board of Education is generous enough to say that they would make ample arrangements to take care of the collection under the Joint provision of the Society and the Lakewood Board of Education just as soon as we were ready.

The Board of Education is now ready to go forward and I am Wondering whether or not you are in a position to say just when you are ready to dispose of the collection and also if you have any suggestion in reference to arrangement or designation.

Could you not induce others to make a like contribution or give us some aid in this connection. We are very anxious to make this as complete as possible.

71:41
LAKEW00D IS PROGRESSIVE IN EDUCATION:Assistant Superintendent of Schools Relates Interesting Development of System Herein Over Twenty-five Year Span.
By George W. Grill

Back in 1911, when the Suburban News issued No. 1 of Volume 1, our suburb had a total population of approximately 16,000 and the school population numbered approximately 3,000. There were 77 teachers in the system and on January 16 of that year, Mr. Charles P. Lynch began his long and notable career as our Superintendent of Schools. The High School was housed in the building on Warren Road, now known as Wilson School, and the 300 high school students with their teachers left sufficient room in the building to house the administrative staff as well. The manual training work of the High School, which had been introduced but a few years previously, was housed in the little annex on the Victoria Avenue side of the present school administration building. There were no junior high schools in Lakewood until ten years later.

Garfield School on Detroit Avenue, opposite Grace Avenue, in 1911 was half the size of the present building. Construction on the east half of the building was begun during that year. In 1916 the Baptist Church property was purchased and added to this site, the church building now forming the gymnasium and assembly hall for this school.

McKinley School on West Clifton Boulevard, consisted of ten rooms in 1911. Some idea of the mounting cost of building construction may be gleaned from the fact that the eight room addition to this building constructed in 1915 cost slightly more than $78,000.00 while a four-room addition added in 1921 Cost slightly over $76,000.00

Grant School on the west side of Warren Rd. was our largest elementary building. It stood on a one—half acre site purchased in 1871 for $300.00. The original four-room building was constructed in 1899 and a nine room annex was added in 1906. The building was increased to its present size by a two-room annex in 1912.

Harrison School on Dowd Street consisted of eight rooms back in 1911, to which an eight-room addition was added in 1916 and another eight-room addition in 1921. The 1921 addition also contains rooms for Americanization classes and a combination auditorium and gymnasium.

Franklin School on Franklin and Lewis Drive contained four rooms. A four-room addition in 1915 and another four-room addition in 1921 were needed to keep up with the rapidly growing population in that area.

Lincoln School with its 27 rooms at the corner of Clifton, Lakeland, and Summit did not exist when the Suburban News first saw the light of day. The original 11 rooms were built in 1913 and eight-room annexes were added in 1916 and 1920.

Madison School with its 19 rooms did not exist in 1911. The original 11 rooms were built in 1912 and four-room annexes were built in 1915 and 1916.

Roosevelt School’s original eight rooms were occupied for the first time in 1922 and within six years, two eight-room annexes had to be added to keep up with the rapidly growing school population. If one has any lingering doubts as to the influence of a school in a neighborhood on property values, these doubts can be easily dispelled by a short automobile trip on Fisher Road from Warren Road to Highland Avenue. The center of this road is the boundary line between Lakewood and Cleveland. Both sides of this street were equally barren prior to the building of Roosevelt School. All of the territory north of Fisher Road is 100% occupied, most of the families moving there since the school was built. The Cleveland side of Fisher Road, still lacking school facilities, still remains, for the most part, weed grown fields.

Hayes School in southwest Lakewood repeated for its territory the history of Roosevelt School. The original twelve rooms were built in 1924, and within five years, two annexes were needed to house the children who with their parents moved into the houses that quickly arose in that district.

In 1926, the last of the elementary schools of Lakewood was completed, Taft, on Whippoorwill Drive between Lake Avenue and Clifton Boulevard. This school was completely filled on the day it was opened and has remained so up to the present time.

The history of junior high schools in Lakewood falls wholly within the lifetime of the Suburban News. The general population of Lakewood grew with such rapidity that within a twelve-year period, the high school enrollment compelled the abandonment of the old high school building on Warren Road and the construction of the present group of buildings known as Lakewood High School at Bunts Road and Franklin Avenue. The old building on Warren Road had housed the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. The new group of buildings was designed to take care of the six upper grades. The new plant was occupied in 1918. With in a three-year period, it became so crowded with six grades that relief was necessary and Emerson Junior High School was built to accommodate the 7th, 8th and 9th grades. There was no breathing spell for the Board of Education between the completion and occupancy of Emerson School and the beginning of construction of Horace Mann Junior High School. The Emerson plans and specifications were used for the second building in order to save time and expense. As soon as this building was completed, more 7th, 8th, and 9th grade pupils were released from the Senior High School, but still the number was more than the plant could comfortably accommodate.

In the meantime, the Board of Education had purchased the Mullally property on Hilliard Road, at the corner of what is now Woodward Avenue, for a third junior high school. Plans and specifications were drawn and the contract let for this building and construction was in progress when President Harding died out in San Francisco. His name was given to the building and the Lakewood Kiwanis Club gave a magnificent picture of President Harding to the school on its dedication day. The opening of this school finally released the Lakewood High School plant for complete use as a senior high school, thus relieving the over-crowded condition that obtained as long as there were junior high school students in the building.

During the years since 1930, the school population of Lakewood, like the total population, has remained substantially even in numbers. An interesting change, however, has been going on within the school system. The elementary schools have fewer pupils now than five years ago, but this loss has been off set by a corresponding increase in the number of senior high school pupils, so that again the senior high building is accommodating approximately 2,700 students, though it was originally planned to accomodate only 2,000.

The hectic building activity of the Board of Education, which began about the time the Suburban News was founded and continued up until 1927, successfully met the rapidly growing school population. Occasionally during this period of time it was necessary for schools to operate on double session and occasionally for short periods of time a few basement rooms were in use, but every effort was made by the Board to avoid these conditions and a notable degree of success was registered. During all but the latter part of this period, the Board’s architect was Charles W. Hopkinson of Edgewater Drive in Lakewood, who designed the buildings and supervised their construction. Taft School and the annexes to Hayes and Roosevelt Schools were designed and their construction supervised by Mr. James W. Thomas. All of the schools built by these two architects are of modern, fireproof construction and excellent design.

Superintendent Charles P. Lynch began his administrative career as head of the Lakewood school system in January of 1911, as has been stated. He continued in that office for 16 years and retired in 1927 full of years and honors and with a record of accomplishment and achievement of which any citizen of the community might well be proud. The Board of Education combed the United States to find a worthy successor and eventually conferred the title of Superintendent of Schools upon Mr. Julius E. Warren, then serving as Assistant Superintendent in Springfield, Massachusetts. Mr. Warren remained at the head of the school system for 7 years, his notable contribution to Lakewood education having been a revised and greatly amplified course of study and a unified administrative plan for the entire system. He submitted his resignation 2 years ago, in order to accept the superintendency in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, one of the larger suburbs of Boston, where he is still rendering outstanding service.

Again the United States was combed by the Board of Education to find a worthy successor to Mr. Warren. In the applications that were submitted, nearly every state in the Union was represented and all of the great universities and teachers’ colleges of the country nominated worthy persons for the position. After months of consideration and scores of meetings, the Board offered the position to Mr. George A. Bowman of Marion, Ohio, who had had a notable career as Superintendent of Schools in several other Ohio cities. Mr. Bowman’s two years of service have amply demonstrated his grasp of educational procedure and his fine quality of leadership, and the Board’s wisdom in choosing him.

This quarter century of educational advance in our suburb has been a good measure of the quality of citizens who have served as members of the Board of Education. Among these citizens who deserve to have statues erected to their memory or gold medals awarded to them for their service to the cause of education may be mentioned such well known names as Otto W. Carpenter, Jacob C. Hoffman, George F. Hart, Robert G. Currn, and Frank N. Barton, who were members of the Board that chose Mr. Lynch as the Superintendent of Schools.

These members were succeeded by such well known citizens as Benjamin O. Fuller, David G. Jaeger, Mrs. C. Lee Graber, Otto F. Leopold, A. G. Gibson, and William F. Ulrich. It was this group of Board members who purchased the 18 acres of land from Mrs. Bertha G. McMuler as a site for the enlarged Lakewood High School, and who built the group of building[s].

The November election of 1919 brought a group of citizens to the Board of Education who achieved national prominence as the model school board. Included in this group are such names as Frank L. Sessions, Cleveland R. Cross, Mrs. Bernice S. Pyke, Mrs. Mina L. Nase, A. F. Allen, and R. B. Robinette. During their term of service, the largest number of buildings were built and the greatest expansion of the school system took place. Nearly every post graduate of the educational administration in the United States is familiar with their names because of a model set of minutes and bond transcript which were included in a book entitled “Public School Business Administration” written by Professor N. L. Engelhardt of Columbia University and Fred N. Engelhardt of the University of Minnesota and published by the Bureau of Publications of Teachers College of Columbia University. This set of minutes and this bond transcript were written by the writer of this article. This group of Board members built the swimming pool at Lakewood High School, the grandstand and connecting corridors between the buildings at the High School, the three junior high schools, Taft, Hayes, and Roosevelt elementary schools, and added ten annexes to various elementary school buildings. They also established the policy which the Board has continued since to follow with respect to High School fraternities and sororities, compulsory vaccination, and medical and dental services.

Major John M. Snead, who came to Cleveland to supervise the construction of the Union Trust Building and who remained to supervise the construction of the Ohio Bell Telephone Building and the Terminal group of the Public Square, took up his residence in Lakewood when he first came to Cuyahoga County. He served a four-year term as member of the Board which ended December 31, 1935. During most of his term, he was the Chairmen of the Board’s important Committee on Buildings and Sites.

The present members of the Board are T. F. McDonald, President; Morris H. Phillips, Vice—President; Mrs. Jean B. Dawson, Arthur J. Hudson, and Melville W. Vickery.

The present Board is concerned with problems relating to restoration of the salaries of employees to a level commensurate with the needs of the employees and the kind of community that Lakewood aspires to be. Another major problem is the restoration of some of the educational positions and educational services that were discontinued as a result of the depression. Other problems relate to the financing of the school system in such times as these, with uncertain and tardy tax collections and a plan of state support that has been changed each year it has been in operation. The board has met these problems honestly, firmly, and wisely and the members of the Board deserve the gratitude of the people of Lakewood for maintaining high educational standards in the community all through a very trying period.

During the quarter century that the Suburban News has been serving Lakewood, the school administration and the Board of Education have enjoyed its powerful support and have appreciated its good editorial advice given freely and generously from time to time. In this matter, the schools have been most fortunate as all of the Lakewood newspapers have been equally cooperative.

The members of the Board, the administrative staff, and the employees all unite in cordial felicitations to the Suburban News on its Silver Anniversary and best wishes for another quarter century of useful service in the community.

71:42
HONOR DAY AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION PROGRAM: MR. WILL LIPPERT PRINCIPAL 1881-1888.
Speech by Mr. Will Lippert, copied from the original Oct. 1, 1934 by Mrs. Russell B. Wise)

It is difficult for me to express fully my appreciation of the signal honor accorded me. Little did I think or dream fifty years ago that the experiment of trying a simple systematic course of study on a group of suburban students, would lead to such a magnificent Nationally renowned High School.

At this point I might briefly recall some of the outstanding features of the early history of this section and some of the primitive conditions of the period. Fifty years ago there was no automobile in Lakewood, nor were there any paved street.

There was a plank road from Warren Road to the City and a Toll Gate at Warren Road where you paid your fee if you wished to drive over the rickety planks.

Fifty years ago there were no electric lights in Lakewood. Thomas Edison had invented the incandescent light, but had not yet put it on the market.

There was the old dummy engine, certainly no “dummy” in a sense, that went puffing and tooting along near the back porches, scaring the farmers chickens.

This road was later bought by the Nickel Plate to get an opening across the Lake shore R.R. and the right of way was located father away from the kitchen doors.

Large wooded tracts covered portions of the area, including all kinds of native trees. Where the tracts were, would be difficult for me to locate now, but I think they were principally between Detroit and Lake Roads.

Nutting parties invaded these sylvan shades, and they were more popular than May Walks. These excursions were held about the latter part of October, after early frost had opened the burrs. It was great sport, out in the crisp autumn air, searching among the dry leaves for the fallen nuts. Chestnuts were sometimes with in clubbing distance and the boys had the opportunity to try their muscles and marksmanship.

There are two questions, I imagine, uppermost in the minds of the student body. What about Athletics? (2) What of class routine?

Of course boys of fifteen and sixteen must have some game in which to try their prowess. In the winter it was mostly snow balling, and soccer ball in the spring as soon as the ground was fit.

I use the word soccer, though I doubt if any of us had heard of either Soccer or Rugby. We used a special rubber ball, half of the boys lined up on either side. No score was kept. When the ball reached one of the goals it was at once put into play again. It was made a pretty fast game for the short noon hour, but I am sure no one was killed nor even injured.

In regard to class routine, you may well believe that when there were only two or three in a recitation each student would be pretty thoroughly quizzed.

In the fall of 1881 I was elected by the School Board of East Rockport Special School District to take charge of their schools. There had been good teachers before me and excellent work done.

During the school year 1881-2 I began to compile a course of study to work by, a goal, an objective for the ambitious student of the High School department to strive for. I can not now recall where I obtained my material, there were several important schools in the county, but to the best of my knowledge none of them had adopted a course of study which lead to any academic honor. Hence in all fairness I can say that here in what is now Lakewood was laid the beginning of the first High School in Cuyahoga County out side the city of Cleveland.

At the beginning of the school year 1882-3 this course of study had been adopted covering three years and including most of the so called High School branches. 1882-3 was the first year under the new regime; 1883-4 the second year; and l884-5 the third year. This brought us to the completion of the course of study and consequent graduation exercises. The school community, all responded with enthusiasm, everybody was interested. Mr. L. W. Day, who was then Supt. of the Cleveland schools and consented to deliver the address, but for some reason, I do not recall, he could not keep the engagement, and suggested Dr. C. F. Dutton to act in his stead. Dr. Dutton’s subject quite a suggestive one “The Difference Between a Dead Ant and a Live One”.

But the one who was the main attraction on the occasion was the young lady graduate. One who had completed the course with credit, and was entitled to the full honors of the school. I am more than happy to say that she is with us today and the honor has been conceded me to introduce her to you.

She is known to neighbors and friends as Mrs. C. L. Weeks, but graduated under the name of Miss May Hutchins. I take extreme pleasure in presenting to you. Mrs. C. L. Weeks, the first graduate and the first alumnus of Lakewood High.

There is another person here who I know did valiant service in the early years of Lakewood Schools. I have the pleasure of presenting Mrs. W. D. Pudney, who presided over what was then called the East Primary situated where Garfield School now is. I always thought that Mrs. Pudney(here the transcript ends.)

Lawrence Edward Vredevoe, young Michigan teacher and school principal, July 10, 1941, was named principal of Lakewood High School when the Lakewood Board of Education approved his appointment by Supt. George A, Bowman.

He succeeds Paul A. Rehmus, who last April was named to succeed Bowman as superintendent when Bowman transfers to Youngstown this fall to head the pubilc schools there.

Vredevoe was given a three year contract with a salary increasing from $5,000 for the first year to $5,500 for thi third year.

The board also approved Bowman’s appointment of Will Montgomery, elementary principal in Bellevue (O.)schools, as an elementary principal in Lakewood. Montgomery will be assigned to a specific school later.

Vredevoe, who was selected from 50 candidates is, is 57. Lakewood, Cleveland’s largest suburb, has favored pumping young blood into its key school positions. Rehmus is 41, and Bowman, when he was given the superintendency in 1934, was 42. According to information supplied by Bowan, Vredevoe is of Dutch extraction, weighs 200 pounds and is six feet two inches tall.

Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., Vredevoe was graduated from the high school at Grandville, a suburb of Grand Rapids; received his bachelor degree from Hope College in Holland, Mich., in 1929 and his master’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1933 after graduate work in political science, law and speech. He is now completing work on his doctorate in public school administration at the University of Michigan.

His teaching career began in 1929, when he was hired by Grandville High School, where he continued through 1934. He also taught adult education classes in Grand Rapids from 1932 to 1934.

In the latter year he became a social science teacher at Ann Arbor High School, and in 1935 he was appointed session room teacher at Ann Arbor Tappan Elementary and Junior High School, this Job being the equivalent of an assistant principalship.

From 1936 to the present Vredevoe has been principal of Tappan School and head of its social science department. Rehmus had previously been principal of this school.

Vredevoe is a member of several Michigan education societies, the National Education Association, the National Association of Secondary Principals, the Ann Arbor Rotary Club, the Y.M.C.A. board and the Presbyterian Church at Ann Arbor. He belongs to Phi Delta Kappa and Pi Kappa Delta fraternities.

PRINCIPALS OF HIGH SCHOOL	1882-1932

Mr. William L. Lippert	1882-1888
Mr. C.J. Weeks	1888-1895
Mr. J.M.H. Frederich	1895-1901
Mr. H. Kennedy	1901-1918
Mr. R.L. Short	1918-1920
Mr. C.P. Briggs	1920-1927
Mr. J.C. Mitchell	1927-

1881	Messrs. J.C. Hall, Oviatt, Hutchins, Webb, Canfield, Gleason	1903	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hannan, Hird, Bittshoffsky, Muhlhauser, Gordon
1882	Messrs. Wagar, Clampett, Hall, Oviatt, Hutchins, Canfield	1904	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hird, Hannan, Gordon, Bittshoffsky, Muhlhauser
1883	Messrs. Canfield, Hutchins, Wagar, Clampett, Hall, Oviatt	1905 (New Village Board Organized)	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hird, Muhlhauser, Gordon, Wight
1884	Messrs. Hall, Oviatt, Canfield, Hutchins, Wagar, Clampett	1906	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hird, Gordon, Wight, Pudney
1885	Messrs. Wagar, Clampett, Hall, Oviatt, Canfield, Hutchins	1907	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Pudney, Baum, Gordon, Coffinbury
1886	Messrs. Hutchins, French, Wagar, Clampett, Hall, Oviatt	1908	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Carpenter, Baum, Gordon, Pudney
1887	Messrs. Hall, Thompson, Southern, Wagar, Hutchins, French	1909	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Carpenter, Baum, Gordon, Pudney
1888	Messrs. Wagar, T.C. Hall, Thompson, J.C. Hall, Hutchins, French	1910	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hoffman, Hart, Curren, Carpenter
1889	Messrs. Hutchins, Tegardine, Wager, T.C. Hall, Thompson, J.C. Hall	1911	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hoffman, Hart, Curren, Carpenter
1890	Messrs. Southern, French, Hutchins, Tegardine, Wagar, Hall	1912	Mrs. Graber, Messrs. Barton, Fuller, Jaeger, Ulrich
1891	Messrs. T.C. Hall, Wagar, Southern, French, Hutchins, Tegardine	1913	Mrs. Graber, Messrs. Barton, Fuller, Jaeger, Ulrich
1892	Messrs. Lapham, Prutton, Hall, Wagar, Southern, French	1914	Mrs. Graber, Messrs. Barton, Fuller, Jaeger, Gibson
1893	Messrs. French, Southern, Lapham, Prutton, Hall, Wagar	1915	Mrs. Graber, Messrs. Barton, Fuller, Jaeger, Gibson
1894	Messrs. Hall, Elliott, French, Southern, Lapham, Prutton	1916	Mrs. Graber, Messrs. Fuller, Leopold, Jaeger, Gibson
1895	Messrs. Peets, Prutton, Hall, Elliott, French, Southern	1917	Mrs. Graber, Messrs. Fuller, Leopold, Jaeger, Gibson
1896	Messrs. French, Greening, Peets, Prutton, Hall, Elliott	1918	Mrs. Pyke, Messrs. Fuller, Jaeger, Leopold, Gibson
1897	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Loveland, French, Greening, Welfare, Prutton	1919	Mrs. Pyke, Messrs. Jaeger, Leopold, Sessions, Gibson
1898	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Welfare, Prutton, Loveland, French, Greening	1920-1925	Mrs. Pyke, Messrs. Allen, Cross, Sessions, Robinette
1899	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hird, Bittshoffsky*, Welfare, Prutton, Loveland	1926-1931	Mrs. Pyke, Mrs. Nase, Messrs. Allen, Cross, Robinette
1900	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hannan, Hird, Bittshoffsky, Welfare, Prutton	1932-19-	Mrs. Dawson, Mrs. Nase, Messrs. Allen, Robinette, Snead
1901	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Muhlhauser, Gordon, Hannan, Hird, Bittshoffsky
1902	Dr. Hobson, Messrs. Hird, Bittshoffsky, Muhlhauser, Gordon, Hannan		*later changed to Bishop

Grant School	18 class rooms	built in the [18]80’s
Manual Training	4 rooms	built in the early [18]90’s
McKinley school	18 rooms	built in the [18]90’s	four additional to finish
High School	23 rooms	built in 1904
Franklin school	4 rooms	built 1909	fund provided for additional rooms
Harrison School	10 rooms	build in 1909	funds provided for 4 additional rooms
Garfield school	16 rooms	build in 1911
Madison school	10 rooms	build in 1912	funds provided for 8 additional rooms
Lincoln school	10 rooms	built in 1913	funds provided for 8 additional rooms