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 BOARD OF EDUCATION 
 
 NILES, OHIO 
 
 BULLETIN 1922 
 
 The School Housing Problem 
 of Niles, Ohio 
 
 Report of a Survey made on request of the 
 
 Board of Education 
 
 By 
 
 GEORGE R. TWISS 
 
 Professor of the Principles and Practices of Education 
 College of Education, The Ohio State University 
 
 Niles, Ohio 
 Printing Dept., McKinley High School 
 1922 
 
 133623 
 
 ■ 
 
 LOS tfGELES 
 LI J aKY
 
 LS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Letter of transmittal by the Superintendent of Schools. 
 Introduction by the President of the Board of Education. 
 
 I Reasons for the survey. 
 
 II An appeal to the public for support and co-operation. 
 Chapter I — The City and the Problem. 
 
 I The city, past, present and future. 
 
 II Factors of the school building problem. 
 Ill The building problem defined. 
 Chapter II — The emergency and how to deal with it. 
 I Congestion in the first six grades. 
 
 1. Jefferson School. 
 
 2. Jackson School. 
 
 3. Lincoln School. 
 
 4. Garfield School. 
 
 5. Monroe School. 
 
 6. Washington School. 
 
 7. Grant School. 
 
 8. Harrison School. 
 
 II The conditions summarized. 
 
 Ill Congestion in Grades Seven to Twelve. 
 
 1. The facts in the case. 
 
 2. Plans to meet the emergency. 
 
 3. Discussion of the emergency plans. 
 
 4. Plan IV is recommended for adoption. 
 Chapter III — The Problem of the building program. 
 
 I Forecasting the increases in enrolment. 
 
 II Calculating the additional pupil capacity required. 
 
 III Determining where to place new building units. 
 
 IV Determining capacity, location and character of the build- 
 
 ing units immediately required. 
 V Units that will be needed later. 
 
 1. The East Side. 
 
 2. The West Side. 
 
 VI Summary of the building program. 
 Chapter IV — Buildings and Building Sites. 
 
 I The Proposed East Side Building, No. 11. 
 
 1. The architectural problem. 
 
 2. What the plans should include. 
 
 3. Description of the types of rooms. 
 
 1. The Classrooms. 2. The Gymnasiums. 3. Study 
 halls and Library. 4. The Laboratories. 5. The
 
 Shops. 6. The Mechanical Drawing Rooms. 7. The 
 Commercial Rooms. 8. The Art Room. 9. The 
 Music Room. 10. The Auditorium. 11. The Cafe- 
 teria and Lunch Room. 12. General Considerations. 
 13. Cost. 14. Later provisions for a Senior High 
 School. 15. Adequacy of the plans. 
 II— Sites. 
 
 1. Size and Cost. 
 
 2. Acquiring the sites. 
 
 3. A splendid opportunity for philanthropists. 
 Ill — Existing Ruildings. 
 
 1. Washington. 
 
 2. Monroe. 
 
 3. Jefferson. 
 
 4. Lincoln. 
 
 5. Jackson. 
 
 6. Grant.
 
 The School Housing Problem 
 
 REPORT OF A SURVEY 
 
 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL BY THE SUPERINTENDENT 
 OF SCHOOLS 
 
 Niles, Ohio, April 1, 1922. 
 Mr. F. C. WagstaiT, 
 
 President Board of Education, 
 Niles, Ohio. 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 On February 7, 1921, Professor George R. Twiss of the Ohio State 
 University, was requested to make a survey of the present housing 
 facilities of the Niles Public Schools and make recommendations 
 for a building program. Professor Twiss spent about five days in 
 Niles, during which time he visited every school several times in 
 addition to visiting every part of the city. The superintendent of 
 schools and teachers collected a great mass of materials, statistics, 
 blue prints and carefully marked maps. These materials were placed 
 in the hands of Professor Twiss, who spent more than ten days in 
 working over the materials of his own observations and the ma- 
 terials supplied by others. 
 
 I have the honor of transmitting the completed report to the 
 Board of Education. The work of the specialist was very carefully 
 done. The figures are accurate; estimates for the future are con- 
 servative. I commend the report to the Board of Education and the 
 citizens of the Niles City School District for careful perusal and 
 thou htful study. I believe it points the way which will lead to 
 continued conservative progress. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 (Signed) S. L. EBY, 
 
 Superintendent of Schools. 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE 
 BOARD OF EDUCATION 
 
 The Board of Education of the Niles City School District has 
 been laboring under two handicaps since the beginning of the Great 
 War, namely, lack of revenue and lack of school buildings. It has 
 been necessary to levy taxes to the limit permitted by law, but even
 
 by so doing the Niles City Board of Education has up to the present 
 time been unable to keep pace with the rapidly growing school 
 system in Niles. The Board of Education has given unstintingly 
 almost unlimited time, its best thought, and conscientious labor. 
 The Board secured the services of Professor Twiss, who served on 
 the staff which made a survey of the schools of Wilmington, Dela- 
 ware. He was also a member of the commission sent under the 
 auspices of the United States Bureau of Education to make a survey 
 of the schools of the Hawaiian Islands. Since making the survey in 
 Niles, Professor Twiss was commissioned by the General Education 
 Board to make a survey of the colored secondary schools and 
 colleges in the South. 
 
 The report which follows has been held in abeyance until the 
 present time. In some ways this has been an advantage. The 
 statistics are those of the school year 1921. Experience for the 
 year 1922 has proved unexpected accuracy in predictions of enrol- 
 ment. In fact, figures of the report tend to fall below rather than 
 surpass actual figures of enrolment in the next three or four years. 
 This fact proves the wisdom of the Board of Education in securing 
 rn expert to make the present study and furthermore demonstrates 
 the necessity of placing the information in the report in the hands 
 of interested citizens in order that there may be no delay in making 
 adequate provisions for the upper grades o.f our schools. 
 
 Since the first draft of the report was submitted a number of 
 the recommendations pertaining to the elementary schools have been 
 carried out. The recommendations which touch the Junior and 
 Senior High Schools are matters for the future. 
 
 The Board of Education submit the text of the report to the 
 public for careful study and constructive criticism. The schools are 
 yours, the moneys to be expended are yours. The members of the 
 Board are your conscientious servants. They solicit your support 
 in carrying out either in whole or in part the recommendations of 
 the following report. Action is imperative; delay is folly. 
 (Signed; FBANK C. WAGSTAFF, 
 
 President Niles City Board of Education. 
 
 REASONS FOR THE SURVEY 
 
 The City of Niles has been growing very rapidly. Within the 
 space of a few years the school system has developed from a 
 village system to a city school system. The school system has not 
 kept pace with the growth and development of the city. The re- 
 strictions of war times have aggravated the inadequacy of buildings 
 and funds for school purposes. 
 
 Another factor which contributed largely in rendering the school 
 facilities of Niles inadequate is the great emphasis laid on high 
 school and college training in the army. The preference shown 
 in the army for men of hi her education has given a strong in- 
 centive to young men to get at least a hi h school education in 
 order not to be handicapped in the future. The struggle for a 
 higher education has tended to fill the upper grades in all public 
 schools. 
 
 —6—
 
 A third factor contributing to the congestion of the upper grades 
 of our school system is the change in the compulsory education 
 laws. The latest law requires all youth to remain in school until 
 the age of 16, and through the seventh grade. The normal child 
 will have had two years of high school work and the retarded 
 pupil at least one year of junior high school work. Under the old 
 law the age limit was one year lower. 
 
 A glance at maps showing the geographic distribution of the 
 pupils in the Niles schools shows that about two-thirds of the 
 pupils live in the east end of the city. At present there are build- 
 ings with sixty-six school rooms w r est of Mosquito Creek where one- 
 third of the pupils live. East of the creek to accommodate two- 
 thirds of the pupils there are twenty-eight rooms. The distribution 
 of buildings no longer conforms to the distribution of school popu- 
 lation. For the reason of the present distribution of school buildings 
 it is important to have a survey in order that there may be a 
 readjustment of buildings to school population. 
 
 The last decade has seen notable advances in public school 
 administration. Progressive boards of education are employing the 
 same principles of business and scientific management that private 
 business is using. Boards of education no longer are pursuing a 
 narrow policy, but have a vision of future growth and needs. They 
 are formulating policies which look tw r enty, thirty, forty and even 
 fifty years in the future. Careful study of past and present condi- 
 tions and needs will give reasonable certainty in predicting future 
 conditions and needs. In no field of public service is insight and 
 vision more important than in public education. 
 
 The Niles City Board of Education has had thrust upon them a 
 keen realization of rapid growth of the city, the increasing im- 
 portance attached to the higher phases of education, the increased 
 responsibility thrust upon the public schools by the new compulsory 
 education laws, the increasing maladjustment of school buildings to 
 school population. Realizing the foregoing, having a vision of and 
 a faith in the future of Niles, and having adopted sound principles 
 of scientific business management, the Board of Education has not 
 only given most careful thou ht to the problems confronting them, 
 but has called upon the specialist for his counsel and recommenda- 
 tions. The Board of Education, the Superintendent of Schools and 
 the specialist have pooled their efforts and best thoughts. This is 
 at least partially crystallized and reduced to permanent form in the 
 following report. By a careful study and constructive criticism 
 there will be formulated a composite judgment which will guide in 
 giving Niles a progressive, economical and adequate school system. 
 The following report is commended to all friends of education in 
 the City of Niles for their study, for criticism, for additional 
 suggestions. 
 
 AN APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC FOR SUPPORT 
 AND CO-OPERATION 
 
 The Niles City Board of Education has been making a conscien- 
 tious effort to provide the city of Niles with a system of schools
 
 second to none in the state. The responsibility has been heavy and 
 the difficulties great. Efforts have been directed along the line of 
 scientific management in the administration of the schools; of 
 formulating a course of study adapted to the needs of the com- 
 munity; of furnishing the best possible instruction; and providing 
 adequate facilities, such as school buildings and equipment in order 
 that the educational work may be carried on as it should be. 
 
 The chief difficulty in carrying out the educational policy of 
 the Board of Education has been lack of school rooms and equip- 
 ment. To date the provisions for the first six grades are almost 
 adequate to give all the children a seat all day in a regular school 
 room. 
 
 The upper grades are at present most seriously handicapped. 
 Next year the senior high school will be more than double what it 
 was in 1915. By 1924 the senior high school will enroll 800 at a 
 conservative estimate. The junior high school enrolls 438 at present. 
 This department will increase. By 1925 these two departments will 
 have an enrollment of 1300 to 1400 students. Present hi h school 
 accommodations provide for not more than 600 to 650 if state laws 
 and rules of hygiene and sanitation are obeyed. The Board of 
 Education has permission to use Old Central only through the year 
 1922-1923. What is to be done after 1923 is problematical. It is a 
 fact that room must be found somewhere for 600 to 800 high school 
 students by September 1924. Conditions at best will be unsatisfac- 
 tory next year. Every year will be worse until sufficient room will 
 be provided for the junior and senior high schools. 
 
 Niles is growing rapidly. Enrolment has increased the past few 
 years at the rate of 260 a year. This means six to eight rooms and 
 teachers a year must be added. Every year a building of at least 
 six rooms must be built to take care of increased enrolment. There 
 is only one condition which will render the school plant in Niles 
 adequate, namely, a complete arrest in the growth and prosperity 
 of Niles. No one having faith in our city can believe such a con- 
 dition possible. It is more reasonable to believe that 1922 will 
 witness 250 new pupils entering the Niles schools — one six-room 
 building; 1923, 250 pupils — another six-room building; 1924, 250 
 pupils, still another six-room building. As soon as it can be built 
 the Niles schools will fill a new sixteen-room building. The new 
 building should be one adaptable to elementary school, junior high 
 school and senior high school work. The building should have 
 facilities for teaching a varied course of study. As soon as it 
 could be built it would probably have assigned to it elementary 
 pupils and junior high school pupils. There is a probability that 
 within a few years it would have to take care of several hundred 
 senior high school pupils. 
 
 The Board of Education is the representative body of the citizens 
 of Niles, whose duty it is to provide facilities for the education of 
 the children of Niles. In certain respects the Board of Education 
 can take no action without the direct approval of the electors of the 
 school district. Any expenditure of money other than for current 
 operating expense requires the direct approval of the electors. 
 There are a few exceptions to this general statement. Howver, any 
 
 -8—
 
 project such as suggested in this report will require a majority vote 
 of the electors. Every citizen of Niles should keep in mind the one 
 freat outstanding fact, THE INCREASE IN ENROLMENT IN THE 
 NILES SCHOOLS IS 260 PER YEAR, EVERY YEAR REQUIRES 
 THE ADDITION OF SIX TO EIGHT SCHOOL ROOMS TO TAKt 
 CARE OF THE INCREASE. To build one small building each year 
 would be impractical. The only feasible solution of the problem 
 confronting the Board of Education is to build school houses in 
 much larger units than in the past. By so doing it will be wise 
 economy in all respects. The citizens of Niles are most urgently 
 invited to study the growth of the Niles schools as set forth in this 
 report. Their support and co-operation is most important in solving 
 the problem confronting Niles. Superintendents and boards of edu- 
 cation are the servants of the public. They come and go. The 
 schools belong to the people and are as permanent as the city itself. 
 The future welfare and prosperity of Niles depends to a great degree 
 on her public schools. Every citizen who is interested in the 
 progress and prosperity of our city should use his influence towards 
 providing adequate facilities for the school children of Niles. The 
 responsibility is yours, the Board of Education are your servants. 
 They are awaiting your decision on the next step to be taken in 
 providing sufficient school buildings to take care of the upper 
 grades of the public schools. What will your decision be? 
 
 -9-
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE CITY AND THE PROBLEM 
 
 I. THE CITY, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 
 
 Niles is pre-eminently a manufacturing city. Situated as it is. in 
 the Mahoning Valley, strategically placed by nature at a convenient 
 meeting point for the iron ore from the upper lake region, and the 
 coal and coke from the Pennsylvania and Ohio fields, in close prox- 
 imity to the limestone and fireclay deposits needed for fluxes and 
 furnace linings, and with abundant outlying territory over which it 
 may expand, the destiny of the city as a large manufacturing center 
 for iron and steel products is clearly indicated. To these natural 
 advantages are added the transportation facilities afforded by three 
 railways, the Erie, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore & Ohio, and 
 the P. & O. interurban trolley line. To these, it is pointed out, may be 
 added in the not distant future, the long dreamed-of ship canal from 
 Lake Erie to the Ohio River. 
 
 In view of these facts and indications, it is confidently predicted by 
 business men that before many years have rolled by the entire Ma- 
 honing Valley between Warren and Youngstown will have become 
 one continuous manufacturing community. 
 
 Niles is already growing rapidly. According to the United States 
 census of 1910, its population was 8,361. The 1920 census reports it 
 as 13,080. This is an increase for the ten-year period of 4,719, or 5G 
 per cent. 
 
 With the growth of the city in population and wealth, there has 
 come to its people a rising consciousness of resourcefulness and 
 power, and a pride of enterprise and public spirit which gives prom- 
 ise that her people are ready to grapple with their problems of public 
 interest in a forward-looking way. They are beginning to think time 
 not in months and years, but in decades, and to estimate costs not in 
 hundreds of dollars, but in hundreds of thousands. 
 
 II. FACTORS OF THE SCHOOL BUILDING PROBLEM. 
 
 Absolutely the most important factor in the future growth and 
 prosperity of the city is the education of her citizens. The knowledge, 
 the training, the enterprising spirit of the men and women who are 
 now directing the city's destinies must be passed on to the rising gen- 
 eration of children, who will soon be controlling the activities -in 
 which their parents are now engaged. If education is not provided 
 
 —10—
 
 for in the best and most scientific manner, the city will fall behind 
 other and neighboring communities both in material prosperity, and 
 in all those spiritual qualities that make a city an advantageous place 
 in which to live and work. Hence in any large and forward-looking 
 program for city development, — in any plans for the future which 
 may be shaping themselves in the minds of the members of the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club, Federation of Churches, 
 Women's Clubs or other organizations commonly taking part in city 
 development — the schools and their needs must be among the first and 
 most important items to receive consideration. 
 
 Shall Niles pursue a hand-to-mouth policy, resorting year after 
 year to such expedients as crowding children into school rooms be- 
 yond their normal seating capacity and air space, or as placing them 
 in ill-lighted and ill-ventilated basement rooms? Shall she remand 
 her children to condemned and abandoned buildings, or place them 
 in portables, which obstruct the light and occupy the playground 
 space, or restrict them to the unpopular and inefficient platoon system 
 with half-day sessions? With an average new crop of nearly three 
 hundred children coming on each year, and with the high school 
 building now crowded to forty per cent beyond its normal capacity, 
 shall the board of education delay until three or four hundred chil- 
 dren are turned out on the streets before it plans a new building or 
 even secures a site for one? This is the way that the school building 
 problem has been handled in hundreds of our growing cities during 
 the past fifty years; and it has resulted in enormous and pitiable 
 economic and social wastes. 
 
 Fortunately, however, progressive cities have found a better way. 
 They have begun to apply to the management of the schools the scien- 
 tific principles of engineering that have proved to be so successful in 
 the management of big business enterprises. 
 
 Railroad companies locate their switches and terminals, and se- 
 cure the necessary land, years ahead of the time when its need will 
 become imperatively pressing. Industrial corporations secure their 
 land for expansion and plan additions to their manufacturing and 
 selling plants years before the time when their business will become 
 handicapped in competition by cramped quarters. Telephone com- 
 panies and banks select the sites and plan their branches to keep 
 pace with the growth of the cities where they are operating, and the 
 branches are ready when the business comes. Business men and 
 public-spirited citizens in many progressive cities are now coming to 
 realize that the schools constitute a basic factor in all economic de- 
 velopment and civic progress; and so in many of our cities, surveys 
 of the conditions and future needs for the school plant are being 
 carried out; and provisions for properly located school sites, and for 
 buildings adequately planned for modern school activities are being 
 intelligently made. 
 
 With this new type of school policy in view; with a keen sense of 
 the present congested condition of the school plant, and with the 
 feeling that the problem of expansion must be solved and solved right, 
 the Niles Board of Education, and its general manager, the Superin- 
 tendent of Schools, have employed the writer to make a careful 
 survey of the school housing conditions in Niles. The purpose of the 
 survey is to assist them in outlining a building program that shall 
 
 —11—
 
 provide for the needs of a school system to be kept abreast of the 
 times in quality, while expanding in size to meet adequately the needs 
 of the growing city. 
 
 III. THE BUILDING PROBLEM DEFINED. 
 
 The first step in the survey was to get at the facts as to present 
 conditions of congestion, as to the rate of growth of the school popu- 
 lation and as to the directions in which the flow of population is 
 lending. Accordingly, at the request of the Surveyor and with the 
 assistance of the teachers and the secretary of the Board of Education, 
 Superintendent Eby secured such data as to the school enrollments 
 of 1915 and 1920 as were available, and had them tabulated by schools 
 and grades according to the directions accompanying the request. He 
 was asked also to have prepared at each school building a map of the 
 city mounted on soft wood, on which the home of each child in at- 
 tendance should be located. This was done by having each child, 
 under the supervision of the teacher, stick a pin in the map at the 
 point representing the location of his home. 
 
 By means of the tabulated enrollments and the pin-maps for the 
 several schools and by means of careful inspections of all the build- 
 ings, it has been possible to determine the present conditions. Also 
 by motoring over every part of the school district and beyond its 
 boundaries in every direction it has been possible in connection with 
 the pin maps, and with other information that was available, to get 
 a good line on the geography of the city and the probable areas over 
 which the population will flow during the next ten years. The data 
 at hand enables us clearly to define the problem that the Board of 
 Education is facing. There are two distinct phases of this problem. — 
 
 1. What must be done to meet the emergency presented by the 
 increase of school enrolment that will certainly take place 
 next fall? 
 
 2. What are the essential details of a building program that shall 
 provide for the children, as fast as they come on, the necessary 
 school sites and school buildings, each adequate in size, cor- 
 rectly located and alfording all the facilities of a thoroughly 
 modernized school? 
 
 In solving the first or emergency phase of the problem it is neces- 
 sary to deal mainly with some temporary expedients such as are not 
 to be thought of in connection with a permanent educational policy; 
 while in solving the second, plans must be laid for a scienti.'ic ex- 
 pansion of the school plant during the coming decade. The present 
 emergency must first be met; and then the plans for the coming ten- 
 year period must be so made that when they are carried out, the board 
 of education of fifteen and of twenty-five years hence shall inherit 
 from the present no legacies of overcrowding, no inadequate or badly 
 located sites, and no misfit or ill-planned buildings, such as the 
 present board has to deal with. The Time to Do This Is Now; and So 
 Favorable a Time Will Never Come Again. 
 
 -12—
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE EMERGENCY AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IT 
 
 I. CONGESTION IN THE FIRST SIX GRADES. 
 
 Table 1 shows for each building what grades, if any, are now over- 
 crowded. On scanning this table the following facts become ap- 
 parent. 
 
 1. In Jefferson School there are only 6 pupils in excess of the 
 number of seats, in two of the rooms; so that the congestion here does 
 not look serious (column 9). However (column 10) there are in five 
 looms 31 seats in excess of the legal limits for these rooms, and 
 (column 7) there are in six rooms 34 pupils in excess of the numbers 
 for whom these rooms provide the amount of air space required by 
 state law. (Compare columns 4 and 5. The law requires that 200 
 cubic feet per pupil be provided for grades I to IV, 225 for grades V 
 to VIII, and 250 for grades IX to XII.) It might be thought that 
 when congestion occurs- in one room, pupils can be shifted to another 
 where there is vacant space; but this is rarely possible, because those 
 rooms are usually occupied by pupils of a different grade, who are 
 older or younger and ere doing entirely different work. 
 
 The congestion in Jefferson school is located in grades I and II, 
 where there are 25 pupils in excess, and in grades V and VI, where 
 there are 7 pupils in excess. 
 
 2 In Jackson school there are 17 more seats than the law allows; 
 but at present only 5 pupils in excess of the legal limit. These are in 
 the two 6th grade rooms. 
 
 3 In Lincoln school there are apparently only 4 pupils in excess 
 of the legal limit; but by reference to column 11 it will be seen that 
 there are 42 pupils of grade I to whom no seats are assigned. This 
 < rade of 102 children has been assigned to rooms 1 and 2 — 85 to Room 
 1 and 17 to Room 2, which they occupy along with 29 pupils of the 
 2d grade. The 85 pupils assigned to Room 1 are divided into two 
 platoons on half-day sessions, 43 pupils attending three hours in the 
 morning and the other 42 attending three hours in the afternoon. 
 This form of platoon system is both inefficient and unpopular. Par- 
 ents and pupils do not like it and school men tolerate it only in an 
 emergency when there is no other remedy for congestion. Over- 
 crowding in this building is prevented by restricting 85 pupils out of 
 398 to half-day sessions. The platoon system must not be confused 
 v. iih the Work — Study — Play plan. 
 
 —13—
 
 4. In Garfield school there are 59 more pupils enrolled in that 
 building than its four rooms provide for. These are now being 
 taught in the upper hall and in a rented room, neither of which is 
 fit for permanent occupancy. The Board of Education has accepted 
 plans for a six-room addition to this building. This addition, if com- 
 pleted by the opening of school next fall, will take care of the excess 
 pupils in this section of the city and also some from neighboring 
 sections. Every possible effort should be made to have the additional 
 class rooms ready on time. 
 
 5. The Monroe school is not congested, but is practically filled 
 up. There is space for only 38 more pupils in its four rooms. See 
 Column 7. The location of this school is very unfortunate on account 
 of the noise and smoke from tracks of the Erie Railroad, which are 
 separated from it only by the width of two vacant lots. In the rooms 
 on the side toward the railroad, recitations cannot be carried on suc- 
 cessfully while trains are passing, so there is much interruption of 
 work throughout the day. 
 
 6. The Washington, or Old Central building, contains 8 available 
 rooms, 5 of which are used for the shop and drawing work of the 
 high school and the 3 remaining for a 4th, a 7th and an 8th grade. 
 This building is not congested; but for other reasons that will be 
 mentioned later, is not fit for housing school children; and its con- 
 tinued use for such a purpose can be defended only on the grounds 
 of extreme necessity, as an emergency measure only. 
 
 7. The Grant building is a two-room structure on a small lot, the 
 rooms being on the plan of the obsolete one-room rural school. It 
 also is entirely unfit for the ordinary purposes of a modern city 
 school. It houses in these tw T o rooms a 1st and 2nd grade and is not 
 over-crowded; but the 2nd grade is on half-day sessions on the 
 platoon plan in order to share the room with a 3rd grade which also 
 occupies it during haLf of each school day. This 3rd grade has 46 
 pupils. Overcrowding is preventing by restricting 89 pupils out of 131 
 to half-day sessions. 
 
 8. The Harrison building at McKinley Heights is a four-room 
 structure, all of whose rooms are too small. It has 7 more pupils 
 and 27 more seats than the air space required by law permits. 
 
 II. THE SOLUTION. 
 
 The accompanying table summarizes the number of pupils in ex- 
 cess of legal air space for all rooms in each of these buildings; and 
 shows at a glance the buildings in which the congestion is, and in 
 what grades the overflow is to be found. 
 
 Excess of Pupils in Grades I-VI Over Numbers for Whom Legally 
 Acceptable Accommodations are Available — Distributed 
 by Grades and Schools. 
 Grades 
 
 Schools 12 3 4 5 6 Total 
 
 Jefferson 10 15 2 3 4 34 
 
 Lincoln 42 2 1 1 46 
 
 Jackson __ __ __ 5 5 
 
 Garfield — 37 22 __ __ __ 59* 
 
 Grant — — 46 __ __ __ 46 
 
 Harrison 3 3 1 __ __ 7 
 
 Totals 6 schools 52 55 71 5 4 10 197 
 
 —14—
 
 Washington __ _•_ __ 38 __ __ 38 
 
 Grant 42 43 __ __ __ __ 85 
 
 Totals** 8 schools 94 98 71 43 4 10 320 
 
 * In upper hall and a rented room, hoth of which should be 
 abandoned. 
 ** Including pupils in Washington and Grant buildings, both of 
 which should be abandoned. 
 It is worst in the three lowest grades and is about equally bad in 
 
 four buildings, Jefferson, Lincoln, Garfield and Grant. There are in 
 these six grades 197 more pupils than the available rooms now in 
 use (that is including one at Washington and excluding the seated hall 
 and rented room at Garfield) can normally provide for. This con- 
 dition is bad; but some relief is at hand. The Roosevelt building with 
 8 rooms, capable of properly housing 306 pupils, will in all probability 
 be in readiness next September. By means of careful adjustment of 
 district boundaries, with the pin maps and the accompanying tabula- 
 tions before him, the Superintendent can take care of the overilow 
 from the crowded elementary buildings. There probably will be space 
 for these and for the normal yearly increase in the enrolment of the 
 ftrst six grades; but a very real difficulty in re-adjusting will occur in 
 avoiding the evil of sending children too far from their homes. It is 
 necessary to say, however, (hat the Roosevelt building must be com- 
 pleted with all equipment in, and seats ready for occupancy at the 
 opening of school next September. No more seats should be placed in 
 this building than the numbers listed in column 7 of Table 1 — 
 namely 306. 
 
 More specifically, the status with reference to this phase of the 
 problem is as follows: 
 
 Enrolment, all schools, grades I-VI, 1920 1825 
 
 Enrolment, all schools, grades I-VI, 1915 1162 
 
 Increase past 5 years 1915-1920 663 
 
 Percentage increase over 1915 57 
 
 Estimated increase 1920-1925 (577r of 1825) 1040 
 
 Increase 1 year 1920-21 (1-5 of 1040) 208 
 
 Excess of pupils at present 197 
 
 Excess pupils Sept. 1921 over present available capacity 405 
 
 Less seats to be provided by Roosevelt building 306 
 
 Net excess Sept. 1921 99 
 
 There is now an aggregate vacant legal seating capacity for 186 
 pupils (see Table I-A, Column 5j, so scattered about the city in 
 various buildings and rooms that most of it cannot now be used. This 
 is because small odd lots of pupils from one grade cannot ordinarily 
 be tau ht in a room occupied by a higher or a lower grade. It seems 
 fairly probable, however, that the net estimated excess of 99 pupils 
 may be absorbed among these 186 vacant seats. It is not safe to count 
 on such a contingency, however, and therefore no effort should be 
 spared to get the Garfield addition finished, equipped and ready for 
 occupancy along with the Roosevelt building by September next. 
 
 With Garfield addition completed, the status would be as given 
 below: 
 
 —15—
 
 New capacity Roosevelt building 306 
 
 New capacity Garfield building 228 
 
 Total new capacity Sept. 1921 534 
 
 Less estimated excess of pupils over present available capacity — 405 
 
 Net excess capacity Sept. 1921 129 
 
 Less 1 room in Washington (46), and 2 in Grant (88) 134 
 
 Number of pupils in excess of capacity Sept. 1921 with both 
 Roosevelt and Garfield addition in commission and with 
 
 Washington and Grant abandoned 5 
 
 Our assumption with reference to the rate of increase of pupils 
 is the only factor involving doubt. If this rate holds for the present 
 year as it has on the average for the past five years, there will be 5 
 more pupils than the number for which there will be available 
 capacity. However, as in the estimate just preceding this one there 
 is now in various scattered rooms capacity for 186 pupils which is 
 not utilized; and it is probable that by careful study and shifting a 
 considerable part of this unused capacity may be made available so 
 as to absorb the small excess of pupils. 
 
 III. CONGESTION IN GRADES SEVEN TO TWELVE. 
 
 1. The Facts in the Case. 
 The most serious emergency problem with regard to overcrowding 
 is in the 7th, 8th and 9th grades (Junior High School) and the 10th, 
 11th and 12th grades (Senior High School). 
 
 Six hundred ninety-eight pupils of these grades are now enrolled 
 in the McKinley High School Ruilding, which originally was designed 
 and expected to accommodate not more than 507. See Table V, 
 Column 6. I have made a careful survey of the building with refer- 
 ence to its pupil capacity. My analysis and calculations show that if 
 we assume an average of 25 pupils per class (which is the standard) 
 and also assume that every room and laboratory is in use by such a 
 class for 85% of the running time, the building as it now stands can 
 accommodate 663 (see Table 6) pupils. This represents its actual 
 maximum capacity; for 85% efficiency in the planning and operation 
 of the time schedule is about the best that can be attained if we 
 assume that the schedule is based on a modern varied curriculum 
 with departmental instruction and with full use of study halls, gym- 
 nasiums and laboratories during a six or seven-period day without 
 resorting to the platoon system or to the Gary (work-study-play) 
 system. By comparing the capacity" as calculated (663) with the 
 latest official enrolment (705) ii will be observed that the building 
 now actually holds forty-two more pupils than it is theoretically 
 possible to crowd into it and at the same time operate it with reason- 
 able educational efficiency on the usual plan of operation. 
 
 As a matter of fact and in confirmation of my calculations, it may 
 be stated that in seven of the eight rooms occupied by grades 7 and 8, 
 there are 48 more seats in use than the architect's blueprint pre- 
 scribes; and there are in various rooms a total of 48 pupils in excess 
 of the number for which air space is provided as required by state 
 law. See Table I. 
 
 This, however, is not by any means the whole story. There are 
 
 —16—
 
 /9 pupils of the 7th and 8th grades who ought to be housed with the 
 others, but are now housed in the Washington or Old Central building; 
 and there are also 3 shop rooms and a drawing room in this latter 
 building that are being used by senior and junior high school pupils, 
 who lose much time in going and coming between the two buildings, 
 and ought to be accommodated at the McKinley building. It is quite 
 clear therefore that at their present capacity, both the McKinley High 
 School and the Old Central Building are now fully utilized and in fact 
 overcrowded. Hence even assuming that the Old Central building, 
 unsafe, insanitary and unhygienic as it is, were to be used next 
 fall, there is no room available in either building to take care of the 
 increase of approximately 177 pupils who will swell the enrolment 
 in the six upper grades next September. 
 
 In taking: account of the gains in school population due to In- 
 crease in the population of the city and of the losses due to dropping 
 out of school, I have used for grades VII and VIII the averag-e percent- 
 age of gains in enrolment per pear for the past five years and the 
 average of the percentage losses for the years 1915 and 1920. By 
 applying these percentages to 276 for next year's 7th grade and 203 
 for next year's 8th grade, I estimate a net loss of 38 pupils for the 
 former and a net loss of 19 pupils for the latter. This makes the 
 probable 7th grade enrolment for next September 238 and the prob- 
 able 8th grade enrolment 184. Adding these to 632, the estimated 
 probable enrolment of grades IX-XII, we have for the probable en- 
 rolment in grades VII-XII next fall a total of 954 pupils which is 
 an increase of 177 over the 777 now enrolled in the junior and senior 
 high school grades. Supt. Eby's estimate based on reports from the 
 teachers as to probable entrants next year gives 943 — an increase 
 of 166. I regard this estimate as conservative. For many reasons 
 I think the actual increase will more likely exceed it than fall short 
 of it. See Table 7. 
 
 We now have the emergency problem for next fall clearly before 
 us. How can 177 additional pupils be taken care of next fall in grades 
 VII to XII when McKinley High School building and the Old Central 
 Building are already being utilizeed to the full extent of their possible 
 pupil capacity, and with seven rooms seating 48 more pupils than the 
 law allows? 
 
 2. Plans to Meet the Emergency. 
 
 To accommodate 177 additional pupils on the present plan of 
 operation will require seven rooms (classrooms or shops or labora- 
 tories) in addition to those now in use in both buildings. It is clear 
 therefore that the administration must either provide seven new 
 rooms by September next, or change the plan of operation and pro- 
 vide some new rooms. 
 
 There seems to be four and only four plans that are at all feasible, 
 as follows: 
 
 Plan I. Provide seven modern unit movable school rooms and 
 place them on the McKinley lot. 
 
 Plan II. Bemodel the outdoor gymnasium at the rear of the 
 McKinley building, making a machine shop, a wood shop and a cafe- 
 teria on the first floor, and a wood shop, a drawing and art room, and 
 a print shop on the second floor. Each of these rooms might have floor 
 area of 40 or 45x24 feet, and this would leave adequate space for 
 hall and stairways and two small storage rooms over the hall. Be- 
 
 — 17—
 
 move the shops at the Old Central building to this new shop building 
 and reseat the old shop rooms. This will provide 8 class rooms 
 instead of 3 in the Old Central building. House the entire 7th grade 
 in these rooms and grades VIII-XII at Mckinley High school building. 
 
 Plan III. Organize the entire school, grades VII-XII into two or 
 three platoons. Make a 9-period time table with two lunch periods 
 in the middle of the day. Arrange the time schedule so that not more 
 than two-thirds of the classes shall be in school at any one time. 
 Build the new shops and cafeteria and use them. Abandon entirely 
 the Washington or Old Central building. 
 
 Plan IV. Build the new shops and cafeteria as in Plans II and 
 III and abandon entirely the Washington building. Organize and 
 operate the school on the "Work-Study-Play" plan, arranging the 
 schedule so that half the school shall be in the class rooms while 
 the other half is distributed about equally among (1) the shops and 
 laboratories; (2) the gymnasium, study rooms and playground, and 
 (3) the auditorium. With this plan it will be necessary to provide 
 two additional class rooms in order to provide for the balanced or- 
 ganization. This can be done by dividing the large room number 9 
 and also the proposed drawing and art room each into two rooms by 
 means of temporary partitions. 
 
 3. Discussion of the Emergency Plans. 
 
 Plan I has many disadvantages. In the first place movable build- 
 ings represent only a temporary expedient to meet congestion, but 
 their use tends to become a habit; and it is a very bad habit when it 
 becomes fixed. When resorted to it seems an easy way of putting off 
 the only permanent solution, namely a building plan and policy, 
 which like that of our national navy, must look years ahead and pro- 
 vide for a continuous state of preparedness and efficiency. This is 
 the only way to prevent disasters and make wasteful expedients un- 
 necessary. Resorting to portables is like easing pain with aspirin, 
 which makes one unconscious of disease until the system is broken 
 down and ruined beyond hope. 
 
 In the second place portables are unpopular with the parents of 
 the children who have to occupy them, and rightly so; because they 
 are unhomelike, are not capable of the best heating and ventilation, 
 and are apt to be so crowded on the school lot that they interfere 
 seriously with one another in securing adequate daylight. Also they 
 fill up the school grounds and leave little or no playground space for 
 the pupils — thus depriving the latter of a part of the birthright of 
 every child. In the third place portables are unprofitable as an in- 
 vestment, both because of the previously stated objections and be- 
 cause they are relatively expensive. Six of these movables would cost 
 from six to nine thousand dollars — a sum which would go a long way 
 toward building over the outdoor gymnasium into a very good shop 
 building. 
 
 My judgment is strongly against the portables excepting in certain 
 rare cases where only one or two are needed for a short time; and 
 I therefore advise that Plan I be ruled out. 
 
 Plan II will effectively take care of the emergency for next fall; 
 but is open to serious objections. First, it involves segregating the 
 
 —18—
 
 7th grade from the remainder of the Junior Higji School. This will 
 cause serious loss of esprit-de-corps, will increase the difficulties of 
 supervision, and will seriously interfere with the features of depart- 
 mental instruction and promotion by subjects, which are essential 
 to the best working of a junior high school organization. 
 
 It also involves the continued use of the Washington building 
 which is unfit for use as a school building and should be permanently 
 abandoned as a day school at the earliest possible date. I therefore 
 advise that Plan II be ruled out. This leaves the choice only between 
 Plan III and Plan IV. 
 
 Plan III is entirely feasible; and will work fairly well; but the 
 platoon system is not capable of subserving the best interest of the 
 children. It shortens their time in school and leaves them too much 
 of their time away from the supervision and direction of their teach- 
 ers. Most of their studying must be done out of school. Now it is 
 well known in the experience of school men that children when out 
 of school are likely to be' on the streets more than at home. The 
 parents of most children do not see to it that they have regular hours 
 of home duties, study and harmless and profitable play; so when the 
 children are out of school during a larger portion of the day than is 
 usual, they waste much of their time and contract idle or mischievous 
 habits. 
 
 Furthermore the school becomes very loosely organized when at- 
 tending in platoons; and it is difficult to maintain unity of school 
 spirit and solidarity of purpose among both students and teachers. 
 
 Finally the platoon system tends to disorganize the family life 
 especially when children in the same family attend during different 
 hours. 
 
 Plan IV Is Recommended for Adoption. 
 
 For these reasons and since the choice is now narrowed down to 
 that between Plan III and Plan IV, I am inclined to advise against 
 Plan III and in favor of Plan IV, which has none of the objections 
 of the first three plans, is not a temporary expedient, but a well tried 
 plan which is being adopted as a permanent policy in many progres- 
 sive school systems, and has many and real advantages of peculiar 
 merit. 
 
 The "Work-Study-Play" system which only the installation of the 
 new shop rooms will make possible, is therefore recommended for 
 adoption. 
 
 -19-
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE BUILDING PROGRAM 
 
 I. FORECASTING THE INCREASES IN ENROLMENT. 
 
 In order to know definitely how many buildings Niles will need 
 immediately and in the near future, to house both the present excess 
 of children and the increasing numbers who are coming on, we should 
 be able to predict how many more children there will be, say, in 
 September 1925 than there are now. To do this with accuracy would 
 be very difficult, if not impossible. It is possible, however, to make 
 an approximate estimate based on the data that are available. This 
 1 shall try to do; for an estimate made on the basis of any reliable 
 data, even though meagre, is far better than a mere guess out of the 
 blue sky, however shrewd the guess might be. In Table II, we have 
 the enrolments for all grades for the years 1915 and 1920, as follows: 
 
 % in- 
 Enrolments 5 year crease 
 
 1915 1920 increase 5 years. 
 
 Grades I-VIII 1432 2210 778 54.3 
 
 Grades IX-XII 316 400 84 27.0 
 
 The distribution of these enrolments is given both by buildings 
 and by grades in Table II and are summarized in Table II-A. 
 
 If we assume that these rates of increase in the various grades for 
 the past five-year period will continue in the average for the coming 
 five-year period, we can estimate the increase up to September 1925, 
 by taking 54% of 2,210, the 1920 enrolment for grades I-VIII, and 
 adding to it 27% of the 1920 enrolment of grades IX-XII. The result 
 is 1,193 plus 108, or 1,301 for the entire city and all grades. 
 
 Of course it is by no means certain that the school population will 
 continue to grow for the next five or ten years at exactly the same 
 rate at which it has increased for the past five years. The rate may 
 gradually diminish; but on the other hand it may increase. This rate 
 of growth has on the average added to the enrolment 260 pupils per 
 year. The increase of pupils for next year over the present enrolment 
 will almost certainly exceed 300; so there is no indication in the 
 experience of the past or present that should lead us to discount this 
 figure in forecasting the future. 
 
 As a further check on this estimate, however, we may compare 
 the rate of increase of the school enrolment with the rates of in- 
 
 —20—
 
 crease in the total city population and the enumeration of youth 
 of school age. The population increased during the past ten year 
 period 56%, an average rate of increase of 5.6% per year. The enum- 
 erated youth increased during the past nine years 32.6%, an average 
 rate of 3.6% per year. Under perfectly normal and stable conditions, 
 the school enrolment should have approximately the same rate of in- 
 crease as the total population and as that of the enumerated youth. 
 That is, the three numbers should bear a constant ratio to one 
 another. It is quite clear however, that for one cause or another 
 they have not done this. The rate of increase for the combined ele- 
 mentary and high school enrolment is 9.8% per year or nearly twice 
 that for the population and more than twice that for the enumeration. 
 There may therefore be considerable ground for supposing that 
 our estimated average increase in enrolment of 260 pupils per year 
 is too high; but in my opinion it is unsafe to base the building pro- 
 gram on a lower estimate. We cannotbe sure that the present rate 
 will become smaller; and there are as many reasons for conjectur- 
 ing that it may become larger as there are for thinking that it may 
 diminish. 
 
 Hence it is safer to accept 260 pupils per year for the average 
 rate at which the enrolment will increase than it would be to base 
 the building program on either a smaller or a larger rate. In my 
 opinion this rate is sufficiently conservative; and the adoption of a 
 smaller one might lead to unwise expenditure by investing large 
 sums in buildings likely to prove themselves inefficient by reason 
 of being too small, on the other hand, the erection of too large 
 a building would involve waste also, altho this waste would last 
 only while the population was growing up to the building. The 
 erection of buildings in small units would interfere with a pro- 
 gressive development of the educational program in a manner much 
 more serious than any but an an expert in school administration is 
 likely to foresee. The administration is even now finding itself 
 handicapped in operating the schools on modern principles because 
 the small buildings necessitate handling the children in small 
 groups. It is difficult, for an example, to introduce the feature of 
 semi-annual promotions, and the feature of grouping pupils accord- 
 ing to ability instead of according to age or to years in school. 
 
 The use of small buildings also involves ultimately a large waste 
 of funds by failure to take advantage of the greater economy that 
 results from the use of large buildings. Hence, from the standpoint* 
 of both efficiency, in the educational program, and of ultimate 
 economy of expenditure in the building program the policy of build- 
 ing in larger units should prevail. 
 
 One reason why we may very well expect a larger rate of in- 
 crease in enrolment than a smaller is worthy of specific mention 
 here. The losses by reason of pupils leaving school before completing 
 the curriculum are decreasing. In the High School especially, the 
 success of the administrative and teaching staff in holding the pupils 
 longer in school has been remarkable. This success has been due 
 to definite, united, and effective effort with this end in view, an 
 effort and a policy for which great credit should be given to the 
 superintendent, the high school principal, and the teaching staff. 
 The effect of this policy will be increas»ed by 'he use of larger, 
 more commodious and more attractive modern building units includ- 
 ing auditoriums, libraries, laboratories and adequate play-grounds 
 and gymnasiums. The important modern facilities can be incor- 
 porated in large buildings with relatively small additional expense; 
 but their cost when duplicated in many small buildings is likely to 
 become prohibitive, so that most of the pupils in the city will be 
 deprived of thrm. Furthermore, experience in many other com- 
 munities has proved that when new and attractive buildings are 
 installed, with modern courses of study including vocational and 
 pre-vocational studies, such buildings always fill up and become 
 crowded much more promptly than was expected. The reasons for 
 this are two: First, pupils of the community are attracted into the 
 
 —21—
 
 schools, who otherwise would not come, and second, people with 
 families of children to be educated are attracted to the city by its 
 superior educational advantages, and move in from other communities. 
 Such people eonstitute a valuable asset to any eity because of their 
 superior intelligence, ambition, and industry. 
 
 With these considerations in view, I have worked out the building 
 program which I shall recommend on the basis of expectation of an 
 average yearly increase of 260 in the enrolment; and have so planned 
 as to make liberal allowance for a possible increase in this rate, as 
 well as for a possible shrinkage. 
 
 II. CALCULATING THE ADDITIONAL PUPIL CAPACITY REQUIRED. 
 
 The analysis and calculation based on the data set forth in Tables 
 I, II and II-A, show that there is a net excess pupils over the pupil 
 capacity of the present buildings of 339 pupils, (See Table III, Column 
 0, 7.) This is the result arrived at on the assumption that all rooms 
 not fit for use according to state building standards are to be 
 abandoned as soon as this is feasible. The pupil capacity thus elim- 
 inated would amount to 339 pupils. (See Table III, Column 3.) 
 
 The increase in enrolment, calculated on the basis of the data set 
 forth in Tables I and II, will, by September of the year 1925, amount 
 to 1,301 pupils. The only element of doubt in this estimate is that 
 which arises from assuming 547r and 27 r /r as the average rates of 
 increase in enrolments for the elementary and high school grades 
 respectively. The grounds for adopting these rates have been fully 
 examined above. If these rates be accepted; and if it be admitted that 
 the unfit rooms are to be abandoned, our building arrangements must 
 provide capacity for 339 plus 1302=1640 pupils. 
 
 The Roosevelt building, now nearing completion, and the Garfield 
 addition, for which plans have been accepted, will provide standard 
 accommodations for 306 and 228 pupils respectively, or an aggregate 
 of 534. Subtracting this number from 1640, the excess just stated, we 
 have a net prospective excess of pupils over capacity of 1106 pupils, 
 which is the number that the building program to be recommended 
 must provide for. At an average of 40 pupils to the room, this would 
 take 28 new rooms. At an average of 35 pupils per room, which 
 would be a better basis from the educational standpoint, because 
 junior and senior high school classes must be smaller than classes in 
 grades I -VI, the number of new rooms to be provided would be 32. 
 (For detailed analysis see Table III.) 
 
 The next step in the building problem is to find out where the 
 new rooms should be located. 
 
 III. DETERMINING WHERE TO PLACE NEW BUILDING UNITS. 
 
 In solving this part of the problem, the pin-maps mentioned early 
 in this report supplied the only available data; but fortunately the 
 inferences to be drawn from these maps are quite clear. 
 
 A count was made on the map for each school, of the pins in each 
 of the various sections of the city. The result of this count is shown 
 m Table IV, in which each horizontal line represents a school named 
 at the left, and each vertical column represents one of the distinct 
 geographical sections of the city, as follows: 
 
 1-A. The section to the west of Mosquito Creek and north of the 
 Erie and B. & O. R. R. tracks. 
 
 —22—
 
 1-B. The section to the west of Mosquito Creek and south of the 
 Erie and B. & 0. R. R. tracks. 
 
 2-A. The section to the east of Mosquito Creek and to the west of 
 Vienna Avenue. 
 
 2-B. The section to the east of Vienna Avenue and north of 
 Robbins Avenue. 
 
 3. The section. to the north and east of the Erie and B. & O. R. R. 
 tracks and south of Robbins Avenue. 
 
 4. "Loop." The section to the east of Mosquito Creek, lying to the 
 south of the Erie and B. & 0. R. R. tracks and to the north of the 
 Mahoning River. 
 
 5. The section to the south of the Mahoning river. 
 
 From the figures in Table IV. it may be seen how many pupils 
 now attending any one school live in each of these sections of the city. 
 
 The following tabulation summarizes these figures, and shows the 
 number of pupils from the eastern sections (including one-half the 
 "loop" section — who are enrolled in senior high school (Column 2), 
 in junior high school (Column 3), and in all the schools (Column 4). 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PUPILS IN THE 
 
 CITY OF NILES 1920-1921 
 
 1 2 3 4 
 
 School Senior Junior All 
 
 High High Schools 
 Section of the city School School United 
 
 2-A 40 49 185 
 
 2-B 110 92 541 
 
 3 20 49 439 
 
 Harrison 8 140 
 
 Loop (y 2 ) 2 24 162 
 
 Grant ___ 170 
 
 Totals— Eastern sections 172 222 1547 
 
 Total in each school group 327 393 2549 
 
 Percent those living in eastern sections are 
 
 of entire school groups 52.6 56 5 60.7 
 
 Thus of the 327 senior hi^h school pupils who registered on the 
 pin-map, 172 or 52.6% live east of Mosquito Creek, excluding the east- 
 ern half of the "loop" section. Similarly it is revealed that 56.5% of 
 the junior high school pupils and 60.7% of all the pupils in all the 
 schools live east of Mosquito Creek exclusive of the western half of 
 the loop section. The western half of this latter section, the whole of 
 which is cut off from the remainder of the city by the railroad tracks, 
 has been grouped with the sections to the west of Mosquito Creek 
 because this portion of the loop section is more accessible to the 
 western division of the city than to the eastern division. 
 
 The pin map registration checks very closely with the enrolment 
 figures for all the schools excepting the senior high school, where 
 complete registration was not secured. There will result from this 
 no error of serious proportions, however, if we assumed that the 
 52.6% of those who did register on the map and who live in the 
 eastern sections are typical of the entire enrolment. That is, we 
 may safely assume that if the pin map registration of the senior 
 high school were complete, we should still find that 53% or more 
 reside east of Mosquito Crctek. 
 
 —23—
 
 From the character of the homes recently erected and now build- 
 ing, and from the character of the allotments being placed on the 
 homesite market, it seems quite evident that the prevailing tendency 
 of the well-to-do and middle-class citizens, the sort of people who are 
 accustomed to sending their children to the high school — are gravi- 
 tating toward this eastern section in greater proportion than toward 
 the other sections. It seems probable therefore, that within five years 
 the percentage of the high school enrolment from this section will 
 rise and overtake that of all the grades taken collectively. That is, 
 we may fairly expect that from 60 to 70 per cent of the excess enrol- 
 ment of all grades by 1925-6, or about two-thirds, will reside in the 
 eastern section of the city. Getting down to figures, our estimated 
 excess in enrolment over present accommodations was 1,640 pupils; 
 and approximately two-thirds of these, or 1,093 will reside in the 
 eastenn sections and the remaining one-third or 547, will reside in 
 the western sections. 
 
 It will be recalled that Roosevelt and the Garfield addition will 
 take care of 534 pupils, while for the remainder of the excess, namely 
 1,106 pupils, no buildings are as yet either erected or planned. 
 
 In other words, the estimated excess for the year 1925 on the west 
 side is 546 pupils, and of these by a fortunate coincidence, 534 will be 
 provided with accommodations in rooms already built or planned. 
 On the other hand, 1,093 pupils, according to our estimate, will reside 
 on the east side; and for these as yet no rooms are even projected. 
 Our building program therefore must provide for approximately 1,100 
 pupils by 1925, and the rooms for their accommodation must be 
 located to the east of Mosquito Creek. 
 
 IV. DETERMINING CAPACITY. LOCATION, AND CHARACTER OF 
 THE BUILDING UNITS IMMEDIATELY REQUIRED. 
 
 Our estimated east side enrolment for 1925 shows us that by that 
 time we should have school housing accommodations on the east side 
 for 1,100 pupils; and the foregoing discussion brings us to the con- 
 clusion that one large building unit will be much more economical 
 in the end and also vastly more efficient educationally than two or 
 three smaller units would be. 
 
 Let us now make an estimate as to how fast one large building 
 will fill up. 
 
 The present excess over legal standard capacity is 339 pupils, 
 according to the indications of the pin-map study; two-thirds of these, 
 or 226, should attend school on the east side. Also the average in- 
 crease of the total enrolment was estimated at 260 pupils per year 
 and two-thirds of these, 174, should attend school on the east side. 
 We have then the following table for the probable east side enrol- 
 ments up to 1925. 
 
 Date Excess 
 
 September 1921 226 
 
 September 1922 400 
 
 September 1923 574 
 
 September 1924 748 
 
 September 1925 922 
 
 —24- 
 
 
 
 Total capacity 
 
 
 Increase 
 
 required 
 
 + 
 
 174 
 
 = 400 
 
 + 
 
 174 
 
 = 574 
 
 + 
 
 174 
 
 = 748 
 
 + 
 
 174 
 
 = 922 
 
 + 
 
 174 
 
 = 1096
 
 According to this estimate, it is clear that if a small building 
 were erected it would be tilled up by September 1922; and another 
 small building would be in immediate demand to prevent over- 
 crowding. On the other hand, if a building to accommodate a 
 thousand to twelve hundred pupils be erected it will be filled to 
 half its capacity in 1922 and to three-fourths of its capacity in 
 1923. By 1925 it will be fdled to capacity and another building 
 must then be under way. As this building cannot be ready before 
 September 1922, the loss in interest on the capital invested by 
 reason of the space temporarily not used will not be serious, and 
 will be practically non-existent in two years after the completion 
 of the building. There seem therefore to be scarcely any arguments 
 in favor of small buildings and very many in favor of the immedi- 
 ate projection of a large building. If the large building be accepted 
 as the choice of the city and the Board of Education, it is evident 
 also that it must provide for the junior high school grades, namely 
 VII, VIII and IX, as well as for the first six grades. In other 
 words, the building must be of such a character that it may provide 
 for a complete nine-grade school, rather than for either an ex- 
 clusive junior high school or an exclusive six-grade elementary 
 school. 
 
 I therefore recommend, that the first step in the building program 
 be the erection of a nine-grade schoolhouse with all modern feat- 
 ures; and I further recommend that this building be so planned that 
 later on it ay include a senior high school with grades X, XI and 
 XII. When this is done, of course, the capacity required for the 
 senior high school must be formed by excluding a sufficient number 
 of elementary grade pupils and providing space for the latter in 
 other buildings. The plans, therefore, should be made with this 
 prospective change in view. 
 
 This building should be located not less than two miles nor 
 more than two and a half miles from McK>nley High School. It 
 should be near enough to Bobbins Avenue to be convenient to the 
 car line, especially in bad weather, and far enough removed from 
 it to avoid the noise and dust of the street traffic. . 
 
 V. UNITS THAT WIL.L BE NEEDED LATER. 
 
 1. The East Side. 
 
 The building already recommended which, for the sake of 
 brevity, we may call number 11, will meet the requirements of the 
 east side for the elementary and junior high school grades until 
 1925, the senior high school pupils, grades X-XII, from this section 
 should continue at McKinley, where there will be room for them 
 on account of the withdrawal from this building of all junior high 
 school pupils from the east side. When McKinley again becomes 
 crowded the east side senior high school pupils may be transferred 
 to number 11. 
 
 Probably some time between 1925 and 1927 number 11 will be 
 filled, and an elementary building for the first six or the first nine 
 grades will be required to be placed in section 2-B to the north 
 and east of Lincoln school and to the north and west of number 
 11. The next step in the development on the east side will be 
 
 —25-
 
 necessitated by the growth eastward of section 3. This step will 
 be an addition to the Jefferson building where there is sufficient 
 land and where the plan of. the present building admits of an addi- 
 tion that can be so planned as to convert this into a modern school 
 plant with accommodations for twice or possibly nearly three times 
 the number of pupils that is now housed there. 
 
 This building which I shall call the Jefferson addition, should 
 not be needed before 1935 unless it turns out that in section 3 the 
 school population grows much faster than in section 2-B. In that 
 case the Jefferson addition and our number 13 would have to 
 change places in the building program. This completes the building 
 program for the east side as far as it is either possible or neces- 
 sary to outline it. Let us now direct our attention to the west side. 
 
 2. The West Side. 
 
 Roosevelt building will provide for all the children who reside 
 in Section 1-A for ten cr fifteen years to come, provided that pupils 
 from other sections are removed from it to keep pace with the 
 growth of enrolment from pupils living in that section. Its capacity 
 can be doubled by an addition when this becomes necessary. 
 
 Garfield building with its projected addition will take care of 
 the growth in enrolment in Grades I-VI of Section 4, at the present 
 rate of increase for those grades until 1931, provided as in the 
 case of Roosevelt, the pupils from other sections are removed from 
 this building according as the school population in Section 4 increases. 
 
 This leaves of the west side only Section 1-B to consider. The 
 present enrolment of pupils in Grades I-VI residing in this section 
 is 258, while the only elementary building in the section is Jackson, 
 with a legal standard capacity of 3G9. 
 
 Assuming that for the immediate future the excess of pupils in 
 the loop section over the capacity of Monroe building will be 
 divided about equally between the east side and the west side sec- 
 tions and that the elementary grade now in the Washington build- 
 ing must also be included in Section 1-B. W 7 e have the following 
 statement for the balance of pupils against accommodations in this 
 section. 
 
 
 
 
 Pin-map 
 
 Pupils who 
 
 
 Section 
 
 Standard 
 
 Registration 
 
 can be 
 
 Building 
 
 City 
 
 Capacity 
 
 Grades I-VI 
 
 accommodated 
 
 Jackson 
 
 Scattered 
 
 Washington 
 
 Monroe 
 
 Scattered 
 
 1 B 
 1 B 
 1 B 
 
 "Loop" 
 "Loop" (%) 
 
 369 
 180 
 
 258 
 37 
 
 136 
 
 431 
 
 Excess 1 B & y 2 Loop — ___ 118 
 
 Total 1 B & V 2 Loop 549 ___ 549 
 
 It thus appears that there are accommodations to Grades I-VI 
 for 118 more pupils in Monroe and Jackson, belonging than there 
 are pupils so located in the city that they should attend school in 
 Section 1-B. The forecast for increased enrolment in this section, 
 like that for the others, is based on the percentage increase of the 
 
 —26—
 
 first six grades during the past five years. This we found, in Table 
 II-A to be 57%. The combined enrolments include 431 pupils. The 
 probable increase for the next five-year period is 577r of 431=247, 
 an average of 1-5 of 247 or 49 pupils per year. 
 
 On this basis the enrolments for the successive years should be 
 approximately as follows: 
 
 1921 431+49=480 1926 676+49=725 
 
 1922 480+49=529 1927 725+49=774 
 
 1923 529+49=578 1928 774+49=823 
 
 1924 578+49=627 1929 823+49=872 
 
 1925 627+49=676 1930 872+49=921 
 
 From this it seems that the enrolment will not exceed the 
 capacity in this section before 1923; and it is probable that by 
 placing in the Roosevelt and Garfield buildings pupils from this 
 section who live near those buildings, overcrowding in Jackson 
 building can be avoided until about 1924 or 1925. It will then be 
 necessary, — especially if that section continues to grow as would 
 seem likely — to plan for a new building for a nine-grade school in 
 Section 1-B. 
 
 By 1930 we should expect the enrolment of this section in 
 Grades I-VI to reach 921. On the basis of the rate at which they 
 are now growing, the junior high school grades VII-IX, should have 
 increased about 350, 1-3 of which increase or 116 would belong in 
 this section. Adding 116 to 921 we have a total of 1,037 pupils or 
 488 more than the capacity of Jackson and Monroe. 
 
 If these figures indicate approximately the actual conditions of 
 ten years hence, it will be seen that the new west side building 
 hould be ready about 1925 and if planned for 500 pupils it would 
 be filled up by 1931. Hence, if by 1924 the growth of the school 
 enrolments goes along substantially as is indicated above, it clearly 
 would be cood policy at that time to plan a building for 750 pupils, 
 which would not fill up until 1935. The building might be so 
 planned as to be erected in three successive sections. 
 
 This building should be located about a mile or a mile and a 
 half west of the Jackson building and near, but not on Warren 
 Avenue. For convenience of reference I shall call it number 12. 
 
 VI. SUMMARY OF THE BUILDING PROGRAM. 
 
 In view of the facts and inferences which have been set forth 
 in detail, the various steps in the building program which is recom- 
 mended are as follows: 
 
 Step 1. Proceed immediately to plan for the financing and 
 erection on the east side of schoolhouse number 11, a modern plant 
 for a nine-grade school, capable of being used ultimately for a 
 twelve-grade school and having a maximum capacity of 1,200 pupils. 
 
 Step 2. About 1924, plan for the financing and erection of 
 schoolhouse number 12, a nine-grade building having a maximum 
 capacity of 750 pupils. 
 
 Step 3. About 1937, if the growth of the northern section of 
 the east side indicates the need of additional accommodations plan 
 for the financing and erection of a six or nine-grade, up-to-date 
 schoolhouse, — number 13 in that section to the north and east of 
 the Lincoln building. 
 
 —27—
 
 Step 4. About 1934, if the demand has become evident, plan for 
 the erection and financing of the Jefferson addition converting this 
 building into an up-to-date plant for nine grades. It may turn out 
 that steps 3 and 4 will have to change places. 
 
 With regard to the "Loop" section of the city, on account of its 
 peculiar character and location, no predictions of any value can be 
 made. For this district a watchful waiting policy should be 
 adopted, which will be outlined and explained in a later section. 
 
 In the meantime all buildings and grounds should be put in 
 perfect repair and maintained in the best possible condition. 
 
 —28—
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 BUILDINGS AND BUILDING SITES 
 
 I. THE PROPOSED EAST SIDE BUILDING, NO. 11. 
 
 With reference to this building, the policy recommended in 
 Chapter III is to plan it for a modern fireproof nine-grade school. 
 That is to say a school comprising a six-grade elementary organi- 
 zation and a junior high school organization including Grades VII, 
 VIII and IX. 
 
 Furthermore if properly planned, and honestly constructed ac- 
 cording to the best manner known to modern architectural 
 engineering, this structure ought to last for a hundred years or 
 more. In fact, if kept always in prime repair it is difficult to 
 imagine any reason why it should not endure for several centuries, 
 like the college buildings, cathedrals and palaces of the old world. 
 
 This being the case, we should not limit our vision of the future 
 to five or ten years, but should consider the probable relations of 
 this building to the school system at a time twenty, thirty or forty 
 years hence. 
 
 It is the lack of such prophetic vision in the past that has 
 placed so many of our cities in the sad predicament in which they 
 now find themselves. One eastern city, for example, must imme- 
 diately scrap every elementary building that it owns, and build 
 new; because these buildings were erected according- to a hand-to- 
 mouth policy which failed utterly to take future needs into consid- 
 eration. 
 
 With the ultimate needs of Niles in mind, therefor, it must be 
 evident that if her growth continues as her business men think it 
 will, and as all indications foreshadow, there is going to be need of 
 an east side senior high school with other east side junior high 
 schools tributary to it. 
 
 This building, Number 11, which is needed now for elementary 
 and junior high school building in the location that I have desig- 
 nated, will be needed some time between fifteen and thirty years 
 hence to house a senior high school. Nobody at this time can 
 predict just WHEN it will be so needed; but no intelligent person 
 who has faith in Niles and her future prospects of growth and 
 prosperity can doubt for a moment that a part, if not all, of it WILL 
 be needed for that very purpose. We must view this building as a 
 
 —29—
 
 permanent investment for Niles, and not as an item of current 
 expense. 
 
 If this be granted, it is evident that tens of thousands of dollars 
 can be saved for the children of Niles, who will be the tax payers 
 fifteen or thirty years hence, by planning this building so that it 
 can be used to house this prospective senior high school organiza- 
 tion when it materializes. AJ1 that is necessary to accomplish this 
 is to provide in the plans, rooms properly designed and located for 
 such additional shops, laboratories and other special rooms as are 
 characteristic of a modern comprehensive high school. These 
 rooms can easily be planned so as to be added on, when needed, 
 as rearward extensions of the two wings of the building. 
 
 1. The Architectural Problem. 
 
 The general problem of designing the building is now clearly 
 before us. The following provisions are essential: 
 
 a. Space for a maximum of 1,200 children. 
 
 b. Design and allotment of rooms of the proper size, character 
 and location for the activities of an organization consisting 
 of six elementary grades and three junior high school grades. 
 
 c. The plans to be so made that 10-18 additional units (shops, 
 laboratories and demonstration rooms, senior high school 
 science and vocational work) may be built on at the rear 
 of the two wings at a later time when they will be de- 
 manded. 
 
 d. The exterior of the building should be adapted to the 
 needs of the interior and not vice versa. The design 
 should not be extravagant and ornate, but both simple and 
 artistic, becoming a manufacturing city with practical but 
 artistic ideals. 
 
 e. The grounds should be ample for play, athletics and school 
 gardening; and that part of them immediately adjacent to 
 the building should be landscaped and decorated with lawn, 
 trees and shrobbery, according to the best artistic standards 
 so that the school and school grounds may be a source of 
 pride and satisfaction as well as a means of artistic educa- 
 tion both to the children in attendance, and to the citizens 
 of the community. 
 
 These requisites are not difficult of attainment; but will require 
 the service of an architect who, by reason of long and varied 
 experience in designing modern school plants, is familiar with the 
 needs of modern balanced school organizations. They will also 
 demand generous and enlightened, but not extravagant financing. 
 
 2. What the Plans Should Include. 
 
 The following outline shows the essential elements of the plan. 
 
 -30-
 
 Essential Units of Plan for Building No. 11. 
 
 Pupil Capacity 
 
 Number and Kinds of Rooms 
 16 Classrooms 
 
 Capacity by Croups 
 
 2 Gymnasiums 
 
 2 Study halls and library 
 
 3 Laboratories 
 
 3 Shops 
 
 1 Mechanical drawing room _. 
 
 2 Commercial rooms 
 
 1 Art room 
 
 1 Music room 
 
 1 Auditorium 
 
 1 Cafeteria and 1 lunch room 
 
 625 
 
 625 
 
 80 
 
 
 240 
 
 320 
 
 75 
 
 
 75 
 
 
 25 
 
 
 50 
 
 
 25_40 
 
 
 25_40 
 
 275-320 
 
 800 
 
 800 
 
 400 
 
 400 
 
 Approximate Total Capacity as a Nine Grade School. 
 
 On the traditional plan of operation 750 
 
 On the work-study-play plan of operation 1250 
 
 Additional Units to be Planned for Senior High School 
 But Not to be Built. 
 
 Laboratories, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Biology, 
 
 Dressmaking, Millinery 6 units 
 
 Recitation Rooms supplementary to Laboratories 2 units 
 
 Shops 8-10 units 
 
 3. Description of the Types of Rooms. 
 
 1. The Classrooms. The 16 classrooms will provide two rooms 
 for each of the first six elementary grades, three rooms for the 
 three junior high school grades and one room for a kindergarten. 
 Each classroom should have a capacity of approximately 8,000 cubic 
 feet, and a floor surface of approximately 640 square feet. Accord- 
 ing to the requirements of the Ohio Statutes, this space would 
 accommodate 40 pupils of the first four grades, 35 pupils of Grades 
 Y-VIII, or 32 pupils of Grades IX-XII. 
 
 If, the administration policy should be to handle the children 
 in larger classrooms, say of 45 instead of 40 in Grades I-IV, the 
 classroom unit should be 9,000 cubic feet instead of 8,000. Such a 
 policy would economize in teaching force; but with a corresponding 
 reduction in educational efficiency. 
 
 2. The Gymnasiums. These should have a combined floor space 
 60 x 80 feet or 4,800 square feet, and should consist of a single 
 room divided at the middle of the long axis by a rolling partition, 
 so that one-half can be used exclusively for girls and the other 
 exclusively for boys at the same time. For exhibition and contest 
 purposes the two can be thrown together. There should be a 
 continuous gallery with a padded running track, and raised seats 
 for spectators. There should of course be separate showers, locker 
 rooms and toilets for the boys and the girls adjoining the opposite 
 ends, and also a swimming pool to be used at different times 
 during the week by the boys and the girls respectively and on 
 
 —31-
 
 different evenings during the week by the men and women of the 
 community. 
 
 3. Study halls and library. These should occupy a central 
 position in the building. Each room should comprise two units of 
 capacity, or about 18,000 cubic feet. The library should occupy the 
 middle position, and the two study halls should open into the 
 library as well as into the corridor. Each room would accommo- 
 date 80 pupils. In the interest of flexibility of use and adaptation 
 to unforeseen conditions, it would be very desirable so to design 
 the two study halls that each can be divided in halves by means of 
 a rolling partition in order that it may at any time be converted 
 into two classrooms. 
 
 4. The Laboratories. These should include a nature study lab- 
 oratory with a plant conservatory and garden plot adjoining out- 
 side, a cooking laboratory with the store room and laundry room 
 adjoining, and a sewing laboratory with a fitting room adjoining. 
 Each should be designed and equipped to accommodate a minimum 
 of 25 pupils with some provision for expansion of equipment in 
 case the need should arise. 
 
 5. The Shops. These should include a wood-working shop with 
 stockroom and wood-working machine room adjoining, and arts 
 and crafts shop with adjoining stock room, and a print shop with 
 a small adjoining room which could be used as a designing or 
 general utility room, and later perhaps converted into a room 
 for photo-engraving and lithographing. 
 
 6. The Mechanical Drawing room. The mechanical drawing 
 room should be near the wood shop, and the art room near the 
 arts and crafts and print shops. Each of these rooms should be 
 equipped for a minimum of 25 pupils. 
 
 7. The Commercial rooms. These should be adjoining with a 
 commercial teacher's office between. The partitions between this 
 office and the two rooms respectively should be of glass, so that 
 the teacher may readily oversee the pupils in either room while 
 he is in the office. One of these rooms should be equipped for 
 book-keeping and office training and the other for typing. 
 
 8. The Art room. This should be artistically decorated, and 
 equipped with drawing tables for 25 pupils. It should be large 
 enough to permit the addition later of ten or fifteen more individual 
 tables. There should be ample banks of lockers and drawing board 
 racks, and cabinets for safe keeping of the pupils' drawing and 
 co'or materials. There should be portfolio cabinets and dispioy 
 racks for keeping and displaying work done by the pupils, and a 
 slock room for the safe keeping of drawing paper and extra 
 materials. 
 
 9. The Music room should be equipped with a piano a phono- 
 graph and a small stage and with lecture seats for 40 pupils. It 
 should also be provided with a screen and a lantern. It could 
 thus be used as a general lecture room and a room for dramatic 
 rehearsals as well as a music room. The equipment should ako 
 include cabinets for musical instruments, player piano rolls and 
 lantern slides. The windows should be provided with opaque 
 blinds or curtains in addition to the usual adjustable s.hrdes. 
 
 - 32—
 
 10. The Auditorium. This room should seat about 800 persons, 
 and have a full stage equipment and dressing rooms. 
 
 A moving picture booth and screen mounting should be included 
 in the design. 
 
 11. The Cafeteria and lunch room. These should be adjacent, 
 with a kitchen between of sufficient capacity to serve milk, cocoa 
 and other lunch accessories to those children who carry their 
 luncheons as well as to supply the regular kitchen service to the 
 cafeteria. 
 
 The combined capacity of the cafeteria and lunch room should 
 be sufficient for the accommodation of 800 pupils in two or three 
 shifts. 
 
 12. General considerations. All rooms especially shops labora- 
 tories and other special rooms should be equipped with wash stands 
 and running water. 
 
 All windows excepting those facing north (and of these there 
 should be very few) should be equipped with semi-transparent ad- 
 justable shades of the Draper type. 
 
 The walls should be decorated with a "flat" oil paint. Rooms 
 facing north should be colored a strong daffodil yellow. Rooms 
 likely to have strong light are best decorated in a light soft tone of 
 brown. For the walls of corridors and for some of the labora- 
 tories and shops a plaster finish is less desirable than light cream 
 or yellow faced brick. Glazed brick that will not take pencil 
 marks easily is best for the walls of toilet rooms. 
 
 Corridors and stairways should be so designed that they can 
 receive adequate daylight on bright days and can be well lighted 
 artificially on dark days. 
 
 The lighting of all rooms excepting possibly some shops and 
 laboratories should be from the left only. The windows should be 
 massed with narrow beveled mullions between and the most 
 forward window should be at least five feet from the front wall. 
 Tops of windows should reach to as near the ceiling as construction 
 will permit — in any case not more than 8 inches from it. Lower 
 sills of windows should be from three to four feet above floors. 
 The total clear glass window area should equal not less than one- 
 fifth of the floor area and the width of that part of the room which 
 is used for writing and reading should not be greater than twice 
 the height of the tops of the window sashes above the floor. 
 
 Since the height of the ceilings should not be much over 12% 
 feet this rule limits the width of a classroom to 24 feet or 25 feet. 
 It would be well to make a few of the classrooms a little larger 
 than the others; and place the windows of each in two groups 
 rather than one; so that any of these large rooms could be divided 
 by a partition into two small recitation rooms in case of future 
 needs in connection with the prospective senior high school. 
 
 Every classroom should have a built-in storage closet a built-in 
 case for specimens and books and a reading table near the book- 
 case. There should be a display board for pictures, clippings, etc., 
 and a display moulding above the blackboard. The height and 
 width of the blackboards should be adapted to the average height 
 of the grade of pupils using the room. Blackboards should be of 
 
 —33-
 
 the best quality of black slate: any other quality is a very bad 
 investment. 
 
 The following are the approved data for blackboards: 
 
 Height of lower 
 
 Grades Width edr?e from floor 
 
 I and II 30 inches 24_26 inches 
 
 III and IV 36 " 2C.28 " 
 
 V and VI 36 " 28_30 " 
 
 VII and VIII 42 " 30_34 " 
 
 IX to XII 42 " 34_36 " 
 
 Teacher's board 48 " 36 
 
 The floor plans should include ample space for the principal's 
 office, a large outer office or lobby, a record vault and toilet room. 
 A small separate office for the stenographer clerk separated from 
 the lobby by a glass partition is also very desirable. 
 
 Space should be provided in the plans for 2 teachers' retiring 
 rooms, 2 pupils' retiring rooms, a clinic room and one or two 
 committee rooms and offices for pupils' organizations. These latter 
 should be so located in the building as to be under easy observation 
 by teachers or administrative assistants. 
 
 There should, of course, be adequate locker space and ample 
 toilet facilities on each floor and bicycle rooms in the basement. 
 
 13. Cost. The cost of this building at present (1921) prices 
 would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $450,000 to $500,000. 
 
 14. Later provisions for a Senior high school. The additional 
 laboratories and shops that will be needed ultimately to provide for 
 a complete and comprehensive senior high school organization are 
 as follows: 
 
 Physical Science Group. — physics laboratory, chemistry 
 laboratory with supplementary demonstration-recitation 
 room and store rooms. 3 units. 
 
 Biology — Geography Groups. Biology laboratory, geo- 
 graphy laboratory, with supplementary demonstration- 
 recitation room and store rooms. 3 units. 
 Household Arts Group.— Dressmaking laboratory, mil- 
 linery laboratory, with fitting and stock room. 2 units. 
 Shop Group. — Machine shop, automobile shop, forge 
 shop, sheet metal shop, with stock and tool rooms. 6 units. 
 Woodworkins shop, wood turning and pattern-making 
 shop and house-framing shop with stock and tool 
 rooms. 4 units. 
 
 The plans should provide as completely as possible for the 
 placing of all shops in one wing and all laboratory groups in the 
 other wing, in order that the noise of the shops shall disturb the 
 work of the classrooms as little as possible. 
 
 15. Adequacy of the plans. If the plans for this building are 
 carefully worked out on the lines suggested with the additional 
 senior high school units all provided for so that they may be built 
 on when needed, the building will, in my opinion, be flexible 
 enough to be adapted to every purpose for which it will be needed. 
 It will afford facilities for every kind of school activity that the 
 most enterprising and forward-looking manufacturing community 
 
 —34-
 
 is likely to want, and at a much smaller ultimate outlay than if these 
 were to be provided for by smaller special type buildings. 
 
 II. SITES. 
 
 1. Size and Cost. 
 
 The site for such a building as has been proposed should in- 
 clude an area certainly not less than 400 x 300 feet; and it should 
 be as much larger as possible. Undoubtedly the land can be had 
 now for less than it ever can be obtained later, and it would be 
 a most regrettable mistake not to get enough while the getting is 
 fairly good. It should be borne in mind that a city must have 
 i laygrounds, and the place for playgrounds is where they can be 
 easily reached by the largest number of children. Since the same 
 is true of schoolhouses and since work, study and play must go 
 together in proper proportions in the education of every child, 
 schoolgrounds and playgrounds should for the most part be identi- 
 cal. When erecting a building to cost $500,000, $25,000 is certainly 
 not too much to invest in a site for the building and the necessary 
 additional land for lawn, playgrounds; athletic field and school 
 gardens. This is only 5% of the total cost. 
 
 2. Acquiring the Sites. 
 
 The board is therefore urged to get options on as large a plot 
 as this amount will buy and do it as quietly as possible through 
 trusted agents, before owners get wind of their intentions and boost 
 the price. If, however, any price-boosting should be attempted it 
 would be well to pick the plot, have a fair board of appraisers 
 determine a just price, offer this price, and if it be not accepted, 
 begin condemnation proceedings at once. 
 
 A similar site should be acquired for the west side school No. 12 
 and for the east side school No. 13 if there is any way in which it 
 can be done legally. It will be poor business policy indeed to wait 
 to buy these sites until the need for them is immediate and urgent. 
 Plots that would be suitable and are now vacant land will, in all 
 probability, be built on by that time and the board will then have 
 to condemn and pay for houses that will be a dead loss and entail 
 a freat expense. If there is no legal way in which the board 
 can acquire such land then an attempt should be made to pet 
 some wealthy and public-spirited citizen to buy the chosen plots 
 and hold them for the board, until it can legally purchase them, at 
 cost plus interest and taxes. No philanthropist could find a 
 better way in which to help the city do a big thing for its 
 children than to buy for the school board these three plots of land 
 — as large plots as possible, and allow them to be used in the mean- 
 time as public playgrounds to be maintained by a suitable associa- 
 tion formed for the purpose. When the time came for the board 
 to buy, the philanthropist would have his capital back with interest 
 plus tax payments, and would be making the city a present 
 only of the unearned increment in the land value, an increment 
 which the city itself will have created, and which therefore every- 
 body should rejoice to have returned to it in such fair and 
 generous fashion. 
 
 —35—
 
 III. EXISTING BUILDINGS. 
 
 1. Washington School. This building was once abandoned and 
 for very good reasons, but has been pressed into service to meet 
 con vested conditions. The lot is utterly unsuitable for school pur- 
 poses. Heavy interurban cars pass frequently near the left side 
 and also near the front of the buliding, which also overlooks a 
 lumber yard and railway freight house. There are blast furnaces 
 with their noisy blowing engines on the left, and the railway trains 
 are passing and endlessly by its right and rear. It is choked and 
 begrimed with smoke and dust. There are cracks in the walls 
 everywhere, among them a very bad crack in the rear which looks 
 dangerous. It is and always was as bad a fire trap as the notorious 
 Collinwood building. 
 
 The lighting in all the rooms is grossly inadequate, being far 
 below the standards required by state law. 
 
 The blackboards are inadequate in amount or in unfit condition 
 for use in every room. 
 
 The toilet facilities are inadequate. 
 
 The third floor of the building is used by lodges and societies 
 often during the daytime. It is dirty and poorly cared for, and 
 these conditions add to the other annoyances. 
 
 This building unquestionably should be abandoned at (he end 
 of this school year, and should never be used for school purposes 
 again. Any money spent in fixing it up will be worse than thrown 
 away. 
 
 The school board could probably get a very good price for this 
 property. In my opinion, they should sell it at the best price they 
 can get, and use the money to buy sites for the new buildings, one 
 of which I have shown will be needed immediately and the other 
 two ultimately. The price which I believe they can get would buy 
 the three sites wanted, erect the shop addition to McKinley high 
 school, and go a long way toward buying all the equipment for 
 the new east side school. I am not sure that it would not go 
 farther than that. 
 
 I have learned that an influential body of citizens oppose the 
 selling of this building, urging that the board keep it for a 
 playground. I cannot see how the board can do this consistently 
 with the functions for which it is created by the state. The board 
 should not maintain one playground with capital that will buy 
 three, when that one has no connection with a school building to 
 be used immediately or in the .future. If the city wants the 
 Washington school lot for a playground and can afford to own it 
 for that use, let the city buy it or let some generous person buy it 
 and present it to the city. 
 
 It seems to me that for the board of education to retain this 
 plot would obviously be unfair, since they could invest the capital 
 involved to so much more advantage to all the children of the 
 city. I therefore recommend that the board have this plot appraised 
 by a fair and just board of competent experts, some of whom are 
 not in any way interested in Niles real estate, and offered for sale 
 at the highest bid above the appraisement. If widely advertised 
 and sold in this way it ought to bring a very good price. 
 
 —36—
 
 2. Monroe School. This school has four rooms and corridors 
 so designed as lo form half of an 8-room building. There is space 
 on the lot for an addition to complete the building; but such an 
 addition would in my opinion be a very bad investment; because 
 the building is situated so near the railway tracks that during the 
 frequent passages of trains the work of classes on that side of the 
 building has to be stopped. Furthermore the character of the "loop" 
 district where this building is located is such that its destiny as a 
 residence district is very uncertain. It looks likely to become an 
 area consisting of lumber yards, small factories and railroad 
 switches, in which case it obviously would be bad business policy 
 to invest money in buildings or additions for this district. In my 
 judgment it will be better not to add to this building, but to wait and 
 see what is going to happen. In the mean time if more rooms 
 should be urgently needed here, which I do not think likely, a few 
 good portable buildings can be placed on the lot on the side oppo- 
 site that on which the railroad is. 
 
 The rooms of this building are dingy and need redecorating 
 and many of the window shades are worn out, but the rooms in 
 themselves are otherwise unobjectionable. 
 
 The worn out shades should be replaced by the tough semi- 
 transparent adjustable school shades of the Draper type; and the 
 walls should be repainted with a bright daffodil or light brown 
 tone. 
 
 The toilets are none too clean, and should be kept cleaner, but 
 otherwise ore satisfactory. 
 
 3. Jefferson building. The rooms in this building are fairly 
 well designed and well lighted. Two basement rooms have been 
 pressed into service, which are too small for the number seated 
 in them Their use is justified in the emergency of the present year; 
 but their use as classrooms should be discontinued as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 The toilet facilities are satisfactory in quality but short in 
 quantity. They are sufficient to provide according to Ohio legal 
 standards for 350 pupils, while there are 450 pupils enrolled. 
 
 The buildin needs redecorating; and it needs more artificial 
 lights distributed more efficiently. The number, power and dis- 
 tribution of artificial lights for school rooms should in every case 
 be .figured out by an illuminating expert before installing them. 
 
 This building has an adequate lot and is so constructed that an 
 addition can be built on to it when necessary. When this addition 
 is projected i? should be planned to include an auditorium, gym- 
 nasium and laboratories for a complete nine grade school as recom- 
 mended in the second chapter of this report. 
 
 4. Lincoln Building. This building is badly in need of re- 
 decorating. Many of the walls are badly cracked and need pointing 
 up; and the old paint is scaling off in many places. The paint used 
 is for the most part a glaring, crude and unpleasant green. A flat 
 oil wall color— daffodil yellow or a light soft tone of brown should 
 be used here, as has been recommended for all buildings. 
 
 5. Jackson Building. This building has 8 rooms and cannot 
 be added to. It is built almost up to the sidewalk so the front 
 rooms are exposed to the noise and dust of traffic. Like many 
 
 1 3 36 2 3
 
 buildings of its time in other cities, it is too small to be efficient, is 
 badly located, is on too small a lot, and is not well designed. Under 
 present circumstances however it is worth keeping in good repair, 
 and should render fair service for a number of years to come. 
 
 6. Grant School. This two-room building is so poorly designed 
 that it is nearly worthless for formal school work, though it will 
 answer fairly for kindergarten and first grade. The light comes 
 from three sides, giving rise to cross shadows which are very bad 
 for the eyes. If the blinds are drawn on the right side to remedy 
 this, then there will not be enough light. There is no way to cor- 
 rect this condition. 
 
 I advise that this building be abandoned as soon as feasible — 
 next year if it can be — or used only as a kindergarten. 
 
 Kindergartens should be started in Niles and this would be a 
 good place to start one next year. I recommend this proposal for 
 serious consideration. If so used the rooms should be redecorated, 
 made artistic and home like, and fitted out with kindergarten ma- 
 terials and storage cabinets in which to keep them. 
 
 The blackboards now in use are of the plaster variety and 
 very poor. 
 
 After the present state of congestion has been effectively re- 
 lieved I believe that this building and lot should be abandoned 
 and sold. 
 
 The other buildings require no further comment. 
 
 -38
 
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 TABLE II-A. 
 
 CALCULATION OF INCREASE OF SCHOOL POPULATION. 
 
 Enrolment Increase % 
 Grade 1915 1920 5 yrs. Increase 
 
 I 223 474 251 112.6 
 
 II 216 292 76 35.2 
 
 III 192 276 84 44.7 
 
 IV 190 283 93 48.9 
 
 V 152 224 72 47.4 
 
 VI 189 276 87 46.0 
 
 I. VI combined 1162 1825 663 57 
 
 VII 152 203 51 33.6 
 
 VIII 118 182 64 54 2 
 
 VII_VIII combined 270 385 115 42.6 
 
 I.VIII combined 1432 2210 778 54.3 
 
 IX 137 133 —4 —3 
 
 X 82 114 32 39 
 
 XI 57 83 26 46 
 
 XII 40 70 30 75 
 
 IX-XII combined 316 400 84 27 
 
 I-XII combined 1748 2610 862 49 
 
 2210X.54=1193, the estimated increase by 1925, Grades I-VIII. 
 
 400X.27= 108, the estimated increase by 1925, High School. 
 
 Total increase i301 
 
 1301-^-5=260+ estimated annual increase, all grades. 
 1193^-5=239 — estimated annual increase, grades I-VIII. 
 108-^-5= 21 — estimated annual increase, grades IX-XII.
 
 TABLE III. 
 
 ANALYSIS OP DATA FROM TABLES I AND II FOR DETERMINING 
 
 THE NUMBER OF PUPILS FOR WHOM ADDITIONAL BUILDING 
 
 CAPACITY MUST BE PROVIDED 
 
 6 
 
 «« SiV 
 
 ■° <o „ ^3 
 
 §8 1§ i§ ^ 
 
 BUILDINGS Sj, >>«} a^ u * 
 
 u eo cs£ a~ ~"0 
 
 ho u£ co -a «« w J 
 
 ** » o £o % % 
 
 eho a<2 z* Zv a a 
 
 Jefferson - 424 64 360 446 ~ 86 
 
 Lincoln 373 __ 373 397 __ 24 
 
 Garfield 204 19 185 198 __ 13 
 
 Jackson 369 __ 369 339 30 
 
 Monroe 180 ___ 180 142 38 
 
 Harrison 137 ___ 137 137 
 
 Washington 134 134 ___ 118 ._ 118 
 
 Grant 112 112 __. 131 _. 131 
 
 Elementary buildings combined 1933 329 1604 1908 68 372 
 McKinley (capacity estimated) 663 698 __ 35 
 
 Total present capacity (net) 2267 2606 68 407 
 
 Roosevelt, Sept. 1921 306 306 __. 
 
 Garfield Addition, 1921 228 228 ___ 
 
 Total net capacity present and projected 2801 602 407 
 
 Estimated increase enrolment by 1925-6 1301 1301 
 
 Additional pupil capacity required 1925 1106 602 1708 
 
 Estimated Total 1925-6 3907 3907 
 
 1106 
 
 Number of rooms required on basis of 40 pupils per room = 28 
 
 40 
 1106 
 
 Number of rooms required on basis of 35 pupils per room = 32 
 
 35
 
 TABLE IV. 
 
 DISTRIBUTION OF THE NILES SCHOOL ENROLMENT ACCORDING TO 
 
 SCHOOLS AND SECTIONS OF THE CITY, AS REVEALED 
 
 BY COUNT OF THE PIN-MAPS. 
 
 Section of City 1A IB 2A 2B 3 Loop 4 Total 
 
 Senior High (Grades IX-XII) 30 105 40 110 20 4 18 327* 
 
 Junior High (grades VII-VIII) 27 74 49 92 49 47 55 393 
 
 Jefferson 3 28 312 103 440 
 
 Lincoln 6 88 219 36 46 395 
 
 Jackson 48 255 5 2 4 314 
 
 Garfield 3 1 1 183 188 
 
 Monroe 21 118 139 
 
 Grant 170 
 
 Washington (4th grade) 
 
 (Old Central) 37 
 
 Harrison 140 
 
 111 437 185 451 439 323 256 2549 
 
 * Senior High School registration incomplete. The total is 400. 
 
 TABLE V. 
 
 INCREASE IN ENROLMENT, GRADES VII -XII, 1915-1920. 
 
 6 
 
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 £z 
 
 
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 70 
 
 30 
 
 75.0 
 
 70 
 
 
 
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 57 
 
 83 
 
 26 
 
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 83 
 
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 X --_ 
 
 
 82 
 
 114 
 
 32 
 
 39.0 
 
 114 
 
 __ 
 
 __ 
 
 IX __ 
 
 
 137 
 
 133 
 
 —4 
 
 —2.9 
 
 133 
 
 __ 
 
 _. 
 
 Total 
 
 IX-XII 
 
 316 
 
 400 
 
 84 
 
 26.6 
 
 400 
 
 __ 
 
 __ 
 
 VIII . 
 
 
 118 
 
 182 
 
 64 
 
 54.2 
 
 142 
 
 40 
 
 
 
 VII . 
 
 
 152 
 
 203 
 
 51 
 
 33.6 
 
 156 
 
 39 
 
 8 
 
 Total 
 
 VII-VIII __ 
 
 270 
 
 385 
 
 115 
 
 42.6 
 
 298 
 
 79 
 
 
 Total 
 
 VII-XII 
 
 586 
 
 785 
 
 199 
 
 34.0 
 
 698 
 
 79 
 
 8
 
 TABLE VI. 
 
 CALCULATION OF WORKING CAPACITY OF McKINLEY HIGH 
 SCHOOL BUILDING. 
 
 Note. — The calculation is based on the following- assumptions: 
 (1) That the average size of class section is 25 pupils. (2) That 
 the average pupil will spend 1-3 of his time in study hall gym- 
 nasium and 2-3 in class rooms and special rooms. (3) That as 
 a result of (2) the maximum enrolment theoretically can be 1-3 
 greater than the combined class room and special room capacity. 
 (4) That an allowance of 15% must be deducted from the maxi- 
 mum theoretical capacity on account of pupils taking extra sub- 
 jects, on account of the existence of small classes in certain 
 subjects and on account of numerous other unavoidable contin- 
 gencies in adjusting classes to rooms and time schedule. 
 
 Number of Pupils 
 Kinds of Rooms such rooms per room 
 
 Medium sized classrooms 14 25 
 
 Small classrooms 3 25 
 
 Cooking, Chemistry, Typing 3 20 
 
 Sewing, Commercial, Physics 4 25 
 
 Combined 24 
 
 Plus 1-3 in Study Hall and Gym. 
 
 Total capacity, theoretical 
 
 Less contingent allowance 15% 
 
 Net capacity, practical 
 
 Study Halls 2 108 & 80 
 
 Gymnasium 1 40 
 
 Combined 3 
 
 Recpiired (theoretical) 1-3 of 780 
 
 Theoretical shortage 
 
 Auditorium 1 800 
 
 Capacity 
 
 350 
 
 75 
 
 60 
 100 
 
 585 
 195 
 
 780 
 117 
 
 663 
 
 182 
 
 40 
 
 222 
 260 
 
 ~38 
 
 800
 
 
 
 TABLE VII. 
 
 CALCULATION AND ESTIMATE FOR ENROLMENT, GRADES VII-XII 
 FOR SEPTEMBER 1921. 
 
 Section A. 
 
 Present enrolment Grades IX-XII 400 
 
 VIII promoted to IX (McKinley) 142 
 
 VIII promoted to IX (Washington) 40 
 
 From Weathersfield Township 30 
 
 From Parochial Schools (Est.) 20 
 
 Total, Grades IX-XII 632 
 
 Less loss by graduation 70 
 
 Less loss by estimated eliminations 30 100 
 
 Net probable enrolment IX-XII 532 
 
 VI promoted to VII (see Section D, below) 238 
 
 VII promoted to VIII (see Section D below) 184 
 
 Total probable enrolment VII-XII 954 
 
 Excess over present total of 777 177 
 
 Section B. 
 
 % gain Average % 
 Grade 1915 1920 Gain 5 years gain, 1 year 
 
 VI 189 276 87 46 9.2 
 
 VII 152 203 51 33.6 6.7 
 
 VIII 118 182 64 54.2 10.8 
 
 Section C. 
 
 1915 1915 1916 1920 1921 1921 Average 
 Grade Enrolment loss % loss Enrolment Loss % loss 7r loss 
 
 VI 189 __ — 276 
 
 VII 152 37 19.6 203 73 26.4 23.0 
 
 VIII 118 34 22.4 182 21 10.3 16.3 
 
 Section D. 
 
 1920 Net 1920 Net Estimated 1921 
 
 Grade Loss Gain loss enrolment loss enrolment '21 Grade 
 
 VI 23.0% 9.2% 13.8% 276 38 238 VII 
 
 VII 16.3% 6.7% 9.6% 203 19 184 VIII
 
 
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