REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS
Ann Arbor, Michigan
March 25, 1920
To the Board of Education of the
School District of Ann Arbor:
Your Committee, during the past months, has carefully studied
the problems of the schools, has secured expert advice and is now
ready to report to you regarding the most serious needs of the
schools and to submit tentative plans which will satisfactorily meet
our present difficulties and partially provide for the future. We
have now, March, 1920, an educational institution with 120 teach-
ers and 3321 pupils, of whom 2531 are in the graded schools and
790 in the high school. There is in the graded schools a total en-
rollment of 2323, exclusive of the eighth grades and the high
school liuilding, or an average of 40 in each room in each grade
building of the city.
In 1912, when there were available ten less rooms than now,
there was an enrollment of 1740, or 35 per room, while in 1915
after Eberbach school was built enrollment had been increased to
1926, still an average of 35 per room. In other words, the build-
ing of Eberbach school just met the increase in school population
and did not relieve the congestion or give us any available room
for growth and conditions are steadily growing worse; in spite
of the four-room increase made in 1916 at Bach school the aver-
age per room is higher than ever.
In some.buildings many first grade children have been allowed
to attend school only one half-day session of each day. Unless
more room is provided soon many more children will have to fol-
low this undesirable practice. In the high school all possible
space has been utilized for school room purposes. The following
table of high school enrollment will serve to show the changes
during the past six years:
ENROLLMENT
Central
Year High School Eighth Grade Total
1914-1915 648 150 798
1915-1916 698 140 838
1916-1917 704 135 839
1917-1918 657 140 797
1918-1919 639 173 8r2
1919-1920 852 187 1039
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EBERBACH SCHOOL
The Eberbach school, on Wells Street and Forest, as built is
part of a ten-room building. The final unit should be built at
once. It will be noted by reference to the table that this district
has had sixty percent of the total increase in school census of the
city of Ann Arbor, during the past ten years. The present build-
ing is the most crowded in the city, the average number of pupils
per teacher being more than forty.
Shortly after the beginning of the current school year, the
Board of Education found it possible to provide temporarily for
one additional grade by building a partition across the upper cor-
ridor. This improvised room should be considered only a tem-
porary expedient because it was impossible to provide more toilet
facilities and the room is in no way connected with the ventilating
system. No children of this densely populated district, whose
grades are above the sixth, are allowed to attend Eberbach school,
which makes it necessary for many quite small children to walk a
considerable distance to the Perry and Tappan schools.
KINDERGARTENS
In not more than one or two buildings can it be said that the
Ann Arbor school system has pure kindergartens and where we
do have a real kindergarten the room is not more than one-half
the size it ought to be for more modern kindergarten work. The
kindergarten is no longer considered a mere adjunct to the public
school. It is neither a frill nor a fad. The kindergarten has
come to stay. School Life, a publication of the United States
Department of Education, sanctions the statement, "The kinder-
garten is the best introduction to school. It is the best institution
for the transition of children from the home to the public educa-
tional institution that we have so far found."
Kindergarten training and kindergarten experience are essen-
tial to the development of the children who are to become citizens
of a democracy like ours. Here can be inculcated an appreciation
of the rights of others and a respect for authority better than can
be done anywhere else. Kindergarten training has its influence
in all subsequent education and development of the individual.
It is the most democratic of all our educational institutions. Ann
Arbor should have at least seven pure kindergartens which child-
ren of ages four and five should be allowed to attend, as in other
cities in Michigan. This would prove to be a good financial in-
vestment because it is commonly accepted that there is less retar-
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GYMNASIUMS AND PLAYGROUNDS
The American people are attaching more importance to the
preservation of health and the development of sound bodies than
ever before. The last two legislatures of Michigan enacted laws
which make mandatory the incorporation of physical education in
our courses of study.
Every child has an inalienable right to physical, as well as
mental, development. It should be the purpose of the Board to
encourage all branches of athletic activities to the end not only
that every child may have the opportunity of participating in
some game and thus learn how to adjust and adapt himself to his
classmates, but also that his individual physical needs may be met.
It is as natural for a growing human being to play as it is for an
animal and it is unnatural not to play. Play is essential to growth.
The adult who cannot retain a position long because of a bad dis-
position probably never had much opportunity to play with his or
her schoolmates. "The boy without a playground becomes the
man without a job."
Ann Arbor's grade schools should have gymnasiums and
larger playgrounds. There is very little chance for grade pupils
to use the high school gymnasium and here too we are confronted
with the problem of buildings. Each grade school ultimately
should have a gymnasium of its own. Our building plan would
not be complete if it did not provide for the purchase of more
land adjoining, or near, our present properties. Land in this city
will never be cheaper and it is almost certain to cost much more
in the near future.
ADDITIONS TO FACILITIES TO PERMIT GREATER
EFFICIENCY AND FLEXIBILITY OF
SCHOOL WORK.
The schools must be operated for the benefit of all the child-
ren; both the brilliant and the slow, plodding child must be cared
for. To operate to the best advantage children should be ad-
mitted to the schools at the beginning of each semester. These
considerations have more than justified the 15 rooms at Perry
school. They make all the more insistant the demands of Mack
and Eberbach schools and they justify the addition of several
more rooms at Jones school to meet immediate needs. Each
building should have at least one class room available for use as
a fresh air room, which has become a permanent feature in the
schools of many cities.
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In every room visited the location of the lamps is bad. The
lighting scheme seems fo be a sort of standard wiring layout with
but little consideration of the purpose of placing the maximum of
light on the pupils' work with a minimum directed at the pupils'
faces. There are four lamps in each room, two toward the front,
two toward the back, the two rows being "bunched" in most
cases. The effect is that, in the rear third of each room, all the
light comes from in front of the pupil—glares into his eyes. Even
in the front seats the light from the two forward lamps comes
from in front of the pupil.
In writing the hand throws a shadow onto the paper. This
shadow should never cover the characters being written. The
light should come from the left as well as from the rear of the
writer. Obviously, the pupils on the left sides of these school
rooms are subjected to light from the right and from the front.
All the present lamps should be moved well toward the rear
of the room and the rows should be moved latterally so that the
right-hand lamps will be on the room's main axis, the left hand
row being located at the cornice. The present glassware should
be thrown away and the lamps equipped with steel reflectors to
throw the light forward, downward and to the right. A still bet-
ter way would be to use a larger number of smaller lamps simi-
larly located and similarly equipped with reflectors—this would
prevent dark spots which are almost inevitable with the lighting
concentrated in a few large units.
The natural lighting from the windows is about what might
be expected in ancient buildings and can be remedied in only one
way, by means of proper design at the time of rebuilding.'
In the Tappan School alone are the windows properly placed
either to give light from the left or to avoid light from square in
front of the pupils and in the Tappan School alone are the glass
areas large. In the other two buildings there are rooms such as
the southwest rooms in the Mack School and all four south rooms
in the Jones School where it is impossible to so locate the seats
that the pupils will not be staring into the light.
In all three buildings windows on the sides of the rooms are
located so near the front as to be quite unavoidably in the range
of vision of the children. One teacher in the Jones School has
wisely closed off the front window in her room.
The serious difficulty in having a strong light within the range
of vision is that the pupil of the eye contracts so as to protect the
sensitive retina against such abuse thereby closing the shutters of
the eye when the eye should be fully open in order to do the con-
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Some minor improvements might be made in the toilet rooms,
as, for example, the placing of an automatic closing attachment
upon the doors of the boys' toilet room, and the improvement of
the drainage from the urinal. Upon the whole, however, the
sanitary conditions of the building are bad simply because of the
antiquated and makeshift character of the toilet rooms and their
equipment and their bad arrangement with reference to the rest
of the building. These things cannot be changed materially ex-
cept through fundamental changes in the building.
The building is equipped with drinking fountains of fairly
good type, though some of these have their control valves set so
tightly that the children are able to put their mouths down over
the metal work of the fountain and draw the water through it, in-
stead of merely catching the fountain flow in the air without
touching the metal parts to the lips, as it should be done. A
little better adjustment of the control valves will correct this de-
fect.
It should be said in this connection that this building from
top to bottom appears to receive the most painstaking and careful
attention from the janitor in charge. This man has an unusually
difficult job to do in keeping the building clean and dustless, and
he does it well.
THE JONES SCHOOL
This school building is in somewhat better condition than the
Mack School, and so. far as floors are concerned, these being
mostly of maple and in good condition. The place is not kept as
clean as the Mack School, however, and there are plenty of un-
used corners of the basement as well as other areas that are being
made a catch-all for dirt and trash and rubbish of every descrip-
tion.
The two toilet rooms in this building are relatively new, hav-
ing been built only a few years ago to replace the old outside
toilet house which formerly stood on the play ground west of the
building. These inside toilet rooms are in the basement, and
communication with them from the corridors above is afforded by
adequate stairways. The floors of the toilet rooms are good, and
walls and ceilings are painted a light color. The ventilation of
the rooms is not as good as it should be, however, and the humid-
ity at times must be oppressive.
These inside toilet rooms are a very great improvement over
the former outside comfort stations, but in arrangement and
character they are far below what a good modern school house
should have.
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There appears to be a sufficient number of drinking fountains,
and these are fairly well distributed over the building. These
fountains are of a very poor type, however. Some of them ap-
pear to be incapable of being satisfactorily adjusted, and are
wasteful of water.
TAPPAN SCHOOL
This school building has suffered so many changes and has
been remodeled so many times that it appears impossible to get
any further improvement out of it. In the main, the floors are
fairly good, excepting in certain places where the cracks are wide
and the floor level is not even. There is a relatively large amount
of space occupied by badly connected halls and corridors. The
stairways are fairly wide and have easy treads, but one or two
are very dark, particularly those leading into the basement. The,
building appears to be kept only tolerably clean by the janitor in
charge, but it must be recognized that he has an exceedingly diffi-
cult job on his hands.
Both toilet rooms are in the basement, and both are intoler-
ably bad. The boys' closet fixtures are grouped together in a
room altogether too small for the purpose, in addition to being
dark and poorly ventilated. The lack of a suitable urinal in this
toilet room is unfortunate, to say the least. The girls' toilet
room is dark and the floor is rough and hard to keep clean. It
has practically no ventilation whatever. Both these rooms must
be excessively bad in warm weather or when overheated in the
winter season.
The school is equipped with drinking fountains, fairly well
scattered over the building, but these are of a poor type and
several of them are out of order. A little attention to these de-
vices would be very desirable, particularly as the warm season is
approaching when they will be more in demand than at present.
In general, the sanitary conditions at this school are far below
what should be looked upon as tolerable or permissible in any city
school. I do not see any way of securing any large measure of
improvement, with the building as it is. Obviously the thing that
is needed here the most, as at the Mack School and the Jones
School, is a new and modern building, with well arranged and
up-to-date equipment for lighting, ventilation, interior communi-
cation, water supply, plumbing, heating, cleaning and other ne-
cessary service.
Respectfully submitted,
W. C. Hoad.
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