COST OF EVENING SCHOOLS. An attempt has been made in this report to ascertain the cost of maintaining night schools. The costs analyzed relate only to instruction costs, as no data were available for the other functions of expense, which are usually of minor importance. The cost of instruction in each city has been divided by the corresponding enroll Highest cost. 10 37.55 27.78 22.22 Average cost per student in night school (Dollars). Groups of cities-II IN V T III VYTI IN V T FIG. 36.-Variation in the average cost per student in night schools in the different groups of cities, 1917-18. ment in night school. Some of the cities separated the elementary night school data from those of the secondary school, while other cities made no such separation. The data had to be ascertained, therefore, in these three forms as shown in Table 57 and in figure 36. The cities of each group have been distributed according to the per capita cost of maintaining night schools. The lowest and highest cost, the median, and the quartiles have been determined for each group of cities. In the diagram the shaded area denotes the middle half of the cities. Thus for elementary night schools in the cities of Group I the cost on this count varies from $4.80 to $8.44 with the median at $6.18. In other words, half of these cities have a per capita cost ranging from $4.80 to $8.44. The lowest cost is $3.08 and the highest cost is $37.55. In each section of the diagram the median generally decreases with the size of the cities, i. e., the cost is generally less in smaller than in larger cities. In construing this figure it should be noted that no account has been taken of the number of night school sessions per week, the length of the session, or the length of the night school year. The wide range in night school costs suggests that various practices prevail in the payment of teachers, in the length of the school year, and in the frequency and length of the session. Greater variations from the medians within the "safety" zones are found in small rather than in large cities. This difference shows that night schools have become more or less standardized in the larger cities. KINDERGARTENS IN CITIES. It is of special interest to ascertain the statistics of kindergartens in cities in so far as data are available. In the cities of the first four groups the statistics for the different types of schools (kindergarten, elementary, etc.) have been completely separated throughout the entire report. All the cities of Group V did not make the classifications desired. In other words, some of these smaller cities reported only aggregate enrollment, teaching staff, etc., without designating either the existence or the magnitude of statistics for kindergartens. In the cities of 5,000 population and over it is found that 539 cities maintained kindergartens. Among the cities of Group V, only 121 reported the maintenance of kindergartens. The statistics by States for all groups combined are shown in Table 69-B. Altogether, 76 supervisors of kindergartens were reported. In these kindergartens, 8,257 teachers are employed. The total enrollment in these schools is 412,239. This number includes 205,674 boys and 206,565 girls. It is seen from these figures that the boys and girls are about equal in number. These children attended kindergartens an aggregate of 40,716,918 days during the year. The average number attending daily was 220,891. For each 100 enrolled in kindergarten, only .54 attended daily. The irregularity in attendance in these schools constitutes a problem of vital concern. The average length of the school term in kindergartens is 184 days, but the children attended on an average only 99 days. They waste 85 days. The length of the term for each city reporting kindergartens is shown in Table 87. HEALTH AND RECREATION. Table 71 shows that 505 cities employed school physicians and 465 cities employed school nurses. Altogether, 1,405 physicians and 1,382 nurses were reported. From these figures it is seen that only a very small proportion of the cities employ physicians and nurses. For the promotion of health 811 cities incurred expenditures amounting to $1,639,553. Only 254 cities reported anything spent for recreation. The small disbursements for this purpose amount to only $337,112. It is quite evident that cities in general have not yet given much attention to the physical welfare of the boys and girls. This statement of course is not true for some cities, but for the majority of them it is only too mild. The total amount spent on health and recreation in city schools is only $1,976,665, or 57 hundredths of 1 per cent of the total current expenses for maintaining the schools. In other words, for each $10,000 spent on the education of city school children, only $57 goes for the conservation of health and physical vigor. If all the disbursements for the promotion of health went for the salaries of the school physicians, they would receive on an average only $1,167 per year. This low average implies that these physicians can only be employed as a general rule for a fractional part of the school term. The implication is still minimized when it is remembered that school nurses are paid out of this small allotment for the promotion of health. TRANSPORTATION OF PUPILS. For the transportation of pupils, 420 cities reported expenditures amounting to $880,435. These cities spend on an average $2,096 for transportation. The other cities reported no expenditures for this purpose. AN ANALYSIS OF CITY SCHOOL EXPENDITURES. Considerable demand has arisen for a method of analyzing city school expenditures which will show at the same time in graphic form just how much money is being spent for the various purposes, how this expense compares with the corresponding cost in other cities of similar size, and whether such expenditures have been properly distributed. In this study the expenditures of 225 city school systems (45 cities in each of the five groups) have been analyzed. These cities were chosen because they made the distribution of expenditures required for this study and because they are located in all sections of the country. For graphic presentation the number of cities in each group could not well be larger. Further, the cities studied in each group should form a norm for the group as a whole. Only the names of the cities have been printed in the graphs, but the State in which each city is located appears in corresponding tables. The order given in the graphs is the same as that shown in Table 59. THE UNIT OF MEASUREMENT. In order to reduce the expenditures in each city to a common basis, it has been necessary to adopt some fair standard as a unit of measurement. The average daily attendance in all day schools has been chosen for this unit. The enrollment in night schools and the cost of instruction in night schools have therefore been excluded from consideration. Unusual expenditures, such as the cost of new buildings, of grounds, and of new equipment, have also been excluded from the study. Thus, only the current expenses of maintaining the schools and the average daily attendance in the same schools have been used in establishing the practice for each group of cities. The length of the school term has not been considered, since little difference on this account exists. City. TABLE 58.-Expenditure of 225 city school systems, 1917-18. 1 $76,658 210,410 24,848 274,516 35,033 27,675 14,494 16,100 Spokane, Wash. Milwaukee, Wis. |