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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—SEPTEMBER I960—PAGE 13
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St. Louis To Adopt Ungraded Primary Plan
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ST. LOUIS, Mo.
T he St. Louis Public Schools
System announced Aug. 19
that grades one, two and three
will be eliminated when classes
are resumed Sept. 8.
The ungraded primary plan, in
which pupils may progress as
rapidly as their abilities permit,
will be substituted.
With the proportion of Negro
pupils in the elementary system
now at about 50 per cent, the St.
Louis schools have been making
an intense effort in recent years
to accommodate their methods to
children of widely varying back
grounds and achievement levels.
The ungraded primary plan,
while regarded by school admin
istrators in St. Louis as advan
tageous without reference to race
of the school population, was an
other step in the effort to achieve
flexibility in the St. Louis educa
tional program. (See “School
Boards and Schoolmen.”)
In its annual report, issued Aug. 6,
the St. Louis police department said
wholesale shifts of population within
the city have contributed heavily to an
increasing crime rate. This was a refer
ence to the fact that the Mill Creek
slum clearance project brought about
the move of 11,000 persons from a 100-
block area now under redevelopment.
The population shift, principally in
volving Negroes, caused housing pres
sures in St. Louis’s West Central sec
tion and brought about overcrowding
of schools in a formerly stable resi
dential section occupied by white peo
ple. (See “Under Survey.”)
To alleviate the overcrowding, St.
Louis school officials are moving quietly
to implement this fall a program for
transporting school children, chiefly
Negroes, from their own districts to
schools that have classroom space
available. (“See School Boards and
Schoolmen.”)
The ungraded primary plan to be in
troduced in St. Louis public schools this
September has been in use informally
here since 1953, William C. Kottmeyer,
assistant superintendent of instruction,
said. He said an increasing number of
schools in the United States were us-
*ng the system and research had indi
cated it produced superior results.
Under the new system, there will be
ao such thing as passing or failing.
° u pils will progress from one level to
another when they are sufficiently
skilled to do so, without having to wait
or other children who may be slow-
? r ' They will have to complete nine
e vels before entering the fourth grade.
WON’T HAVE TO WAIT
Kottmeyer said every child would be
a e to progress as his abilities per-
tted, without having to wait for oth-
f^ s - He said another advantage would
of u ' a * ever y child would be assured
furtK t ^ le kasic skills needed for
tim” er e< ^ uca Uonal progress by the
e he entered the fourth grade,
cu ef j ar ^ a U° n , Kottmeyer said, will oc-
r ,, largely in a pupil’s early years
w , er than later, in the middle grades,
.., e ? students have more trouble
etching up.
ex , a l; e tter for distribution to parents,
W the system, Supt. of Instruc-
J °n Philip j Hickey said .
level 6 s tart the pupils at the first
they ^ et Ibem go on as rapidly as
school^' P u Pil in our primary
exacti ” as a levels sheet which shows
in? y where he is in reading, spell-
Writ;° ral and written English, hand-
“Wh § anc * erithmetic.
a* otk en he moves from one teacher to
or fr o er ’ 0r ^ rom one room to another,
sheet m ° ne sc h°°l to another, his levels
c° n t ln g0es with him. The new teacher
“rm Ues his work from where he is.
inintv,? 11 ! a c hU^ finishes the E-2
i°UrtV, level, he will be ready for the
th e te ?u rade - hi e will be able to read
al on „ X anc l, we think, will get
grades » muc h better in the higher
the i!. dren s re Port cards will inform
rea c h e j en ! Ihe level of achievement
Pro mnt -’ a ut will say nothing about
®ate or,? 1 * feUure. Marks will indi-
aver a p_ y whether the child is above
a given’ a ^. era ® e or below average in
The St. Louis system has been or
ganized to provide special instruction
for culturally deprived children, trying
to correct reading and other deficien
cies as early as possible. In the current
summer (Southern School News, July
1960) a Ford Foundation grant has
financed a crash program in remedial
reading and spelling for 2,000 elemen
tary school children of the Banneker
District and environs, about 95 per
cent Negro.
TO TRANSPORT 3,500
Quietly and in accordance with plan,
the St. Louis Board of Education is
proceeding to put into effect this Sep
tember its program for transporting
some 3,500 children, predominantly
Negroes, to schools that have extra
space.
This plan (SSN, August 1960) be
came the only alternative, school offi
cials said, when St. Louis voters ear
lier in the year defeated a $29,535,000
school bond issue proposal. The bond
issue would have authorized new
school construction in west central St.
Louis, where increasing numbers of
Negro residents have caused schools to
become overcrowded.
At a cost of at least $135,000 a year,
the children from overcrowded school
districts will be transported by bus
each day to designated schools that
have space for them. In the case of at
least six of the receiving schools—Wal
nut Park, Herzog, Mark Twain and
Walbridge in north St. Louis, and Ken-
nard and Gardenville in south St. Lou
is—the plan will involve the introduc
tion of Negro children for the first
time into schools that up to now have
had an all-white population, SSN was
told.
By careful planning and selection of
well-qualified teachers, school officials
have tried to minimize any friction be
tween the races. They are hopeful that
the transportation p’an will go forward
without undue incidents.
The transported children will not be
put in the same classes with children
from the neighborhood of the receiv
ing school, but will be handled as units
within the host school. This decision
was made over the objection of Negro
leaders. The transported children will
mingle with the local children at recess
and assembly periods, however.
Asst. Supt. Kottmeyer, who has
charge of St. Louis elementary schools,
said the transported children would be
picked up each morning at the schools
they normally would attend in their
own neighborhood. With faculty super
visors accompanying them, they will go
by bus to the host schools—in some in
stances a distance of eight to 10 miles
—for the school day.
30-MINUTE RECESS
Instead of getting an hour for recess,
as the local children of the host schools
do, the transported children will get a
half hour. This will permit them to fin
ish classes at 3 p.m., a half hour ear
lier than the other children, and allow
time for them to be transported back
to their own district schools for dis
missal at the usual dismissal hour, 3:30
p.m. While they are at the receiving
school, they will be kept on the school
grounds.
“The neighborhood children get an
hour for lunch, and most of them go
home to eat,” Kottmeyer said recently
when the matter was being discussed
before the Board of Education. “The
transported children will be given only
a half hour because they can’t go
home.”
Kottmeyer also said one of the un
desirable aspects of transporting chil
dren from one school to another was
that the academic achievement of the
transported group usually drops.
“We get poor adjustment,” he said.
“The pupils in the receiving school usu
ally resent those sent in, and don’t
accept them. This problem will be ag
gravated by the racial factor.”
By election of the school board, chil
dren will be transported in rather con
centrated units rather than scattered
or parceled out over a number of
schools. For example, under the plan,
some 325 pupils from the Dozier School,
in the West End area of racial transi
tion, would be taken by bus each day
a distance of eight miles to Gardenville
School in south St. Louis, a school that
has had an all-white population. Gar
denville School has nine empty rooms.
UNDER SURVEY
The St. Louis police department’s
annual report, calling attention to the
contribution of population shifts to an
increasing crime rate, said that migra
tion to St. Louis of lower-income per
sons from rural areas of Missouri and
Illinois and from the Deep South, also
had added to crime prevention prob
lems.
In 1950 there were 10,281 major
crimes reported in St. Louis. By 1958
the total was 23,574. There was a slight
drop to 23,175 last year. The highest
rate was in an area adjoining the cen
tral business district and extending
west to the city boundary, a section
that has been the focal point of Negro
residential expansion during the decade.
A principal transition area, mentioned
frequently in SSN in recent months
because of school crowding problems
there, is the West End’s 12th police
district—from Kingshighway west to
the city limits between Lindell Boule
vard and Natural Bridge Avenue. The
police board’s report said this area,
once a neighborhood of fashionable
homes and apartment houses, had un
dergone a drastic change for the worse
in terms of the income level and educa
tional background of its inhabitants. In
the last decade, the district’s overall
crime rate has risen by 364 per cent.
# # #
OKLAHOMA
Sapulpa Desegregates High School;
Tornado Demolished Negro Building
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.
D esegregation of a school dis
trict as the result of a tornado
and admission of Negroes for the
first time to a metropolitan high
school mark the beginning of
Oklahoma’s sixth year of integra
tion.
Sapulpa, near Tulsa, found it
simpler and more economical to
desegregate its high school rather
than re-build a Negro school
nearly demolished by a spring
tornado.
Oklahoma City’s Northeast
High School pre-enrolled six Ne
gro students for the fall term and
two others registered in August.
(See “School Boards and School
men.”)
Forty-five more Negro teachers were
hired by the Oklahoma City Board of
Education in a general revamping and
expansion of the Negro school lineup.
Among them were teachers who had
lost their jobs elsewhere because of
desegregation. (See “School Boards and
Schoolmen.”)
Two small “Little Dixie” districts,
Graham and Fox, which once sought
special state aid consideration to main
tain segregated Negro elementary
schools, prepared to keep them open
another year despite the extra cost.
(See “School Boards and Schoolmen.”)
The Alluwe District superintendent’s
plan to add a Negro teacher to his
white staff was postponed a second
time. The small, neighboring Negro
school from which he hoped to obtain
the teacher managed to survive for an
other year of operation. (See “School
Boards and Schoolmen.”)
At 6:32 p.m. May 5 a tornado funnel,
dancing crazily out of boiling, black
skies, swooped low over Sapulpa, seat
of Creek County in northeastern Okla
homa. In its wake it left three dead,
many injured and a school building
“pretty well exploded” down to its
foundation.
This fall, as a result, Sapulpa will
have an integrated high school.
The ruined building was Booker T.
Washington Elementary and High
School, located in the Negro section on
the north side of town. It housed 300
Negro pupils in the first nine grades,
another 75 in grades 10 to 12.
Actually, as Supt. Noel E. Vaughn
put it, “We integrated as of 6:32 p.m.”
To meet the emergency, the Negro pu
pils were assigned to Sapulpa’s new
high school for the three weeks re
maining in the spring term. It was the
first time Negroes had attended there.
SCHOOL RECONSTRUCTED
Since then enough of the Booker T.
Washington building to house the ele
mentary and junior high grades has
been reconstructed on the same site,
using some of the old foundation. It
was financed with $121,000 in insurance
money.
Vaughn said the 75 Negro youngsters
in the upper three grades will be in
tegrated permanently with 800 whites
in the new high school, completed in
January.
“We were planning to integrate any
way, so this happened at the right
time,” said Vaughn. Nevertheless, the
storm loss presented enough of an
emergency that the board obtained
$249,000 in civil defense disaster aid to
pay for adding four or five classrooms
and a shop to the new high school to
help accommodate the Negroes.
The superintendent estimated the
cost of replacing the entire Booker T.
Washington building would have been
about $375,000. The insurance and civil
defense grant almost equaled that.
PUBLIC KNEW’
But there was no sense building it
back and then have to move the pupils
out later and leave empty rooms,”
Vaughn explained. “Eventually we
were going to do it (integrate), al
though our plans were not in the open
yet. But the public knew it was com
ing, that it was an economic necessity.”
Vaughn said the district also will
save $8,000 to $10,000 in teacher sal
aries by the integration move. Until the
tornado the Negro school had 16 teach
ers, five of them assigned to the sec
ondary grades. Enough of the Negro
teachers left the district voluntarily so
that staffing worked out “just right”
without integrating faculties, the su
perintendent said.
The grade school portion of Booker
T. Washington was re-built on the
same site, Vaughn added, to avoid a
long walk for the smaller Negro pupils.
Negroes account for just under 10
per cent of Sapulpa’s total enrollment
of 3,800.
The superintendent said the brief in
tegration last spring was accomplished
without incident and he expects no
trouble this fall.
EIGHT NEGROES ELIGIBLE
Northeast will become Oklahoma
City’s second integrated high school if
the eight Negro students follow through
on their plans when classes start Sept.
6. Under board of education policy,
they are eligible to attend Northeast if
they are residents of its attendance
area.
Lederle J. Scott, Northeast principal,
pointed out some of the six Negro pu
pils who pre-enrolled in the spring
may have been shifted to Central High
School or to Douglass (the city’s only
Negro senior high) in an eastside boun
dary re-alignment announced in May
(Southern School News, June 1960).
Integration of Northeast was expect
ed a year ago, after Negro families
began moving northward across the
traditional boundary, Northeast 23rd
Street, between white and Negro resi
dential areas. However, no Negroes en
rolled.
Northeast (predicted enrollment:
1,167) is the eighth Oklahoma City
school expected to have both Negroes
and whites in attendance this fall. Be
sides Central High, which has an esti
mated 200 Negroes out of some 1,100
students, the others are Lincoln, Edi
son, Harmony, Walnut Grove, River
side, and Wilson, all elementary
schools. Mark Twain, Willard, and
Washington grade schools also have
Negroes living in their areas but the
Negroes have chosen to transfer to
buildings where their race predomi
nates.
Oklahoma City’s roster of Negro
teachers has been boosted by at least
45 for the coming year. The increase
stems from conversion to Negro fac
ulties of two former integrated schools
and addition of the ninth grade to
West Virginia
(Continued From Page 12)
schools. He had been principal of Cen
tral Elementary School in Hinton be
fore going to the superintendent’s of
fice. He succeeds John Rosenberger who
resigned to accept a school post in
Florida.
Roy McClanahan has been named su
perintendent of the Putnam County
schools. Prior to that he had been as
sistant with offices at Winfield. He suc
ceeds James C. Sovine of Hurricane
who resigned.
GRANTS RAISE
The Kanawha County Board of Ed
ucation on Aug. 3 gave its teachers a
raise, putting them near the top of
the pay scale in West Virginia schools.
The boost ranged from $11 a month
for beginning teachers to $50 a month
for teachers with 16 years or more ex
perience.
The pay in Kanawha County schools
now ranges from $3,700 a year for a
starting teacher to $5,575 for one with
a doctor’s degree and 16 years expe
rience.
Southeastern Construction Co. of
Charleston was low among eight bid
ders on a student union building at
West Virginia State College, a Negro
institution until the 1954 desegregation
ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. A
majority of its students now are white
but the faculty is in the main Negro.
Southeastern bid $464,000 for the one-
and-a-half story building. It will con
tain a game room, snack bar and con
ference rooms. Results of the bidding
will be submitted to the State Board
of Education for action later.
Negro pickets marched silently in
front of two Bluefield theaters Aug. 16,
in a resumption of picketing that first
began late last winter in protest to
racial segregation in seating arrange
ments.
The NAACP state president, Rev. C.
Anderson Da*tey said his organization
is not supporting the picketing and he
knew nothing about it.
A circuit court injunction granted
May 13 limited the number of pickets
to two and prohibited any interference
with theater patrons.
MAY LOSE SCHOLARSHIP
It was reported on Aug. 14 that a
Charleston girl may lose a scholarship
to enter nurses training because no city
nursing school will accept Negroes. The
girl, a former West Virginia State Col
lege student, won the scholarship from
the Kanawha Medical Society Auxili
ary. It pays $100 a year.
When the girl decided to attend col
lege for a year before starting nursing
training, the auxiliary agreed to hold
the scholarship for her, Dr. Milton J.
Lilly, president of the medical society
said. Regulations of the auxiliary re
quire that scholarship recipients take
their training in Charleston.
But Dr. Robert Anglin, West Vir
ginia State professor, said she must go
to Huntington since “Charleston nurs
ing schools will not take a Negro.” She
may still get to keep the scholarship,
Lilly said. Steps are being made to re
vise the rules in her case.
Two days later spokesmen for
Charleston’s several hospitals denied
that Negro girls are denied admission
to the city’s nurse-training schools.
However, they wouldn’t say flatly that
the schools are open to Negroes.
“It’s just that we’ve never had any
colored girls apply,” one official said.
And when asked what would happen if
one did apply, he added, “That’s some
thing that will have to be decided when
the time comes.” # # #
Douglass. That will increase the Doug
lass staff from 36 to 57.
The old Webster Junior High, once
white, then integrated, is the new
home of the Negro Moon Junior High.
Eleven teaching posts have been add
ed. (The old Moon building is now an
elementary school.)
Culbertson Grade School, which also
went through the white-to-integrated-
to-Negro cycle, offered 13 new positions
for Negro teachers after the white fac
ulty was assigned elsewhere.
Some of the new Negro teachers were
hired locally, some from other Okla
homa cities, and some from out of the
state. The school board personnel office
said many of them were not currently
employed, having lost their jobs in the
closing of Negro schools because of de
segregation. About 360 Negro teachers
(See OKLAHOMA. Page 14)