SCHOOLS AND MUNICIPALITIES

At the joint hearing upon the education chapter of the proposed New York City Charter, held by the cities committees of the Legislature on the 6th inst., Senator McCarren very pertinently asked why the management of the schools should not be through a department of the city government, as well as the management of the police service, or the fire service, etc. The answer was not given as completely as it seems to me it should be.

The reason is that the state constitution [art. IX, § 1], directs that "the Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools." The Constitution does not require the Legislature to provide for the maintenance and support of policemen, or firemen, or street cleaners. The federal Constitution omitted all reference to the education of the people, evidently because that was deemed to be a matter for the states. All states have assumed control over it. It has not been left to inference or implication. Every state has erected a state system of education, by positive provision in its Constitution and laws. In no case has a state permitted it to become a matter for a municipality, as such, to deal with. Often a state has utilized the machinery of a municipality to care for some interest of the schools, but that has been only for convenience or from the necessities of the case.

Following the mandate of the Constitution, the state has enacted general educational laws and constituted general educational authorities for the specific purpose of assuring adequate and suitable schools in every part of the state. The state has constituted a local educational organization for every rod of its territory, which local organization becomes a part of the state's general educational system; but if the people of any city or district, through such local organization, omit to maintain schools, or maintain inadequate or inefficient schools, the law and the authority of the state at once step in to provide them. Ordinarily the local interest in education. is sufficient for all ends. Commonly, there is enough good sense in a community to prevent the use of the schools for other than educational ends. The American spirit is generally to be relied upon to carry out the state's educational plan according to its letter and intent. But it is not always so.

Comments on the proposed changes in the education chapter of the New York City Charter, April 8, 1909.

In every part of the state, and ever since the educational system began to grow, the public schools have been part and parcel of the state system, designed to assure equality of opportunity to all the people of the state. The New York State Constitution throws upon the Legislature direct and immediate responsibility for the maintenance and support of a system of schools "wherein all the children of this state may be educated." This of course charges the Legislature with responsibility for a system of schools which shall be suitable and adequate for the purpose named. It has come to be fundamental that the educational system is a state system, and in no sense a municipal system. Public education is completely differentiated from those municipal activities for which the municipal government should be charged with primary responsibility.

This state raises by tax, and pays from its treasury, something like $7,000,000 a year for the support and maintenance of its educational activities. Where the money of the state goes, the responsibility, care and direction of the state go also. This is not the mere theory of an education officer. It is fixed by the holdings of the courts of last resort in all the states where the subject has had the advantage of judicial determination. There is no lack of determinations to this effect by the Court of Appeals of the State of New York. There are no well considered legal authorities opposed to this fundamental principle of the educational system. It is the only principle upon which a reasonably efficient educational system may be assured in all parts of a state.

The New York State Legislature has uniformly observed this principle in the making of laws, whenever laws have not been smuggled through the Legislature without real consideration. The Legislature has also observed this principle in the interpretation, as well as in the making of laws. The state Constitution provides that no person shall be eligible to the Legislature who at the time of his election is "an officer under any city government." In 1876 a school inspector in the city of New York was elected to the state Senate. His seat was contested on the ground that as such school officer he was an officer under the government of New York city. The Senate decided that the Board of Education of the City of New York was possessed of powers and liable to the performance of duties not of a local character, and hence was not under the city government. The charter of the city of Albany, through a piece of legal bungling, enumerates members of the Board of Education among the city officers. A member of that Board of Education was elected to the Legislature. His seat was contested

on the ground that he was constitutionally ineligible. After full consideration of the subject, men of all parties in the committee of investigation agreed that, notwithstanding the provision in the Albany City Charter, a member of the Board of Education was not and could not be a city officer, and therefore was not ineligible to the Legislature, and the House adopted the report without dissent.

In view of all this, the provisions in the proposed New York City Charter, including members of the Board of Education in the list of city officers, and specifically constituting the education department an administrative department of the government of the city of New York, are both meaningless and confusing.

The education laws of this state, and of many other states, have provided for the appointment of members of the Board of Education by the mayor not because he is mayor, but in spite of that fact and because he is the only general officer upon whom it seems at all feasible to confer the power of appointment. Upon the whole, appointment in that way has perhaps worked as well as the creation of the board in any other way would have done. But the provision in this proposed charter, that the mayor may remove any member of the Board of Education at his pleasure, is a vicious novelty in legislation which has never been invented until now.

It goes without saying that the educational system must necessarily be separated just as far as may be from the political activities of a municipality. Of course, there are likely to be points of inevitable contact. No one has been disposed to complain much about the school budget going to a central board of estimate and apportionment for consideration with other public expenditures, because of the almost imperative necessities of the case. But any arrangement which empowers any board or officer of the city to fix or change a teacher's salary, or to do anything else bearing upon the freedom and efficiency of the schools, and which does not give the management of the schools absolutely and completely to the officials who are chosen for that particular purpose, ought to be stoutly resisted by every one who is interested in the welfare of the schools.

The provision in the proposed charter that the Board of Education of the City of New York shall not possess the powers or privileges of a corporation, taken in connection with many other provisions, to some of which I have only alluded, submerges the educational interests of the city in the corporation and the politics

of the city itself. That would take away all vestige of educational independence. It would deprive the people of the city of New York of important educational rights which the rest of the people of the state of New York enjoy.

In a word, the educational chapter of the proposed charter is drawn upon a theory which has never been legally established, which is repugnant to universally established legal and educational theories of the country, and which is absolutely antagonistic to the interests of education.

THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE

Mr President, Governor Hughes, and teachers, students, graduates and friends of the State Normal College: The management of this old and excellent institution has peculiar pleasure in the aid of this distinguished company in these dedication exercises. The attendance of the Board of Regents and of so many of the leading school superintendents of the state is gratifying. The presence and the words of Governor Hughes are inspiring. The school has had influential friends all its life. The act creating it was signed by Governor William C. Bouck. The appropriation for its first real home was signed by Hamilton Fish; that providing for the second building by Grover Cleveland; that providing for these beautiful buildings by Governor Frank Wayland Higgins; and that for their furnishings and equipment by Governor Hughes. In fact, there has been no governor or legislator in many years who has not had the opportunity to do something for us. We acknowledge all these favors in the hope of other favors yet

to come.

It is sixty-five years since the state established this institution. New York was the first state to appropriate moneys for the training of teachers, but not the first to establish a separate state normal school. As early as 1818 Governor DeWitt Clinton recommended some rather fanciful schools for the training of teachers, which, however fanciful, contained the real fundamentals of the present normal school system. In his succeeding annual messages for ten years he evinced his deep interest in the subject, and for another ten years his successors, Van Buren, Throop, Marcy, and Seward, discussed it with political caution and educational enthusiasm that were mixed by masterful hands. The idea of separate normal schools was taking form, but it was opposed by strong forces, for the colleges and the academies and the Regents were against it. Azariah C. Flagg, a great superintendent of common schools from 1826 to 1833, favored separate normal schools. John A. Dix, an equally great superintendent of common schools from 1833 to 1839, was with the academies and the Regents. So was his distinguished successor, John C. Spencer. In 1827 the Legislature, evidently upon the initiative of Clinton, added $150,000 to the literature fund "to promote the education of teachers," and in 1834, at the instance

Address at dedication of new buildings, October 28, 1909.