DETAILS TO BE CONSIDERED.

In formulating a building program, there are a number of details which the board should keep in mind. In the buildings themselves consideration should be given to sanitary and hygienic requirements: to heating, lighting, and seating arrangements; to suitableness of location and to pleasing appearance. School sites should be selected on locations that are high and well drained and large enough to afford ample space for playgrounds and gardening spots. Each school should have at its command 10 acres, certainly not less than 5. An auditorium at each school large enough to accommodate the people of the community as well as of all the children of the school should be provided. Rooms for such special activities as home economics, shopwork, and the like, besides cloakrooms, storage and supply closets, are also needed and should be arranged for in any building program adopted.

When transportation is provided it should receive the interested attention of the board. Only reliable adults able to maintain discipline among the children should be in charge of trucks and wagons. Not too many children to be properly seated should be placed in each truck. The danger of children standing or hanging on the outside of transportation trucks is obvious. The board should take every precaution to avoid accidents. Wagons should run promptly on a fixed schedule, as regularly as trains, with meeting points provided at convenient places where the trucks should wait from 5 to 10 minutes for the children to arrive. Truck drivers should be under bond. In many localities transportation by contract is found more satisfactory than under the direct management of the school board. Reliable farmers or garage owners are given the contract to transport children at a fixed per capita price. This necessitates less responsibility on the part of the board and is no more expensive; in fact, is often more economical than other plans.

SUGGESTIONS FOR RELIEVING PRESENT CONGESTION.

The following suggestions are offered to relieve the present housing emergency in the county:

The community school should be enlarged. It is at present crowded beyond its capacity and the children at the Oil Refinery are not provided for. There are ample grounds for all purposes including the teaching of agriculture at the Community site. A four-room building is too small for economy or efficiency and partakes of many of the weaknesses of the isolated one or two-teacher schools. Modern equipment in the way of grounds and rooms can be supplied most economically with one large building to accommodate the people at Community and the Oil Refinery.

The question of maintenance at reasonable expense is of equal importance. A capable principal can be secured only by paying a liberal salary. Such a principal can supervise a large building as well as a small one. Teachers trained to teach the new subjects which should be introduced into the course of study can be secured with little additional cost in a group of from 6 to 10 but would probably have to be dispensed with if two small buildings are utiliz instead of one.

Since the oil plant is only about a mile from the community building. transportation would p" bably be unnecessary. However, even if it were necessary, the expense of supplying it would be less than the expense of maintaining two schools.

As soon as satisfactory building arrangements are consummated the children from Cypress Mills and the Thornton communities should be enrolled in the schools of Brunswick. The present transpertation plan is both unsatisfactory and wasteful. There is no real justification for taking children 24 miles past the Brunswick schools. The children of Cypress Mills can walk to the street-car terminus and go to Brunswick with the expense to the board of street-car fare only. Those from the Thornton community should be transported to the terminus and take the street car also.

The new building contemplated to accommodate the children of Jamaica, Bladen, and Tholman should contain at least two classrooms in addition to one or two workrooms and an auditorium. The two white schools on St. Simons Island should also be consolidated. The same sort of building arrangement would be practical here and at Bladen so that such plans and estimates as are needed would answer for both places. If the board of education decides to construct permanent buildings, a design for consolidated schools on the unit plan should be adopted. Buildings planned so that additional rooms could be added when necessary should be erected at once to satisfy immediate needs.

One more consolidation is practical and desirable. The new wagon road now being built along the railroad to Everett will make it possible to transport the children at Hunters Siding and to combine the schools of these two places. The distance will not exceed 4 miles. The county owns no buildings at either place. Everett is a permanent community and the county should not continue to use the present building, which is entirely unfit in size and arrangement for school purposes. A 5-acre tract should be secured and a building similar to the one suggested above should be erected on it as soon as persible.

When these plans are carried out there will remain the children at Brookman and Blythe. Eventually the children at Brookman should be transported to the new school at Bladen. This may not be feas

ible at once owing to the condition of the roads. It should, however, be done as soon as possible. For the present a one-teacher school will have to be retained at both places. These should be limited to the first six grades. The present effort to have eight grades at Brookman makes altogether too many small classes necessary and is an injustice to the smaller and older children, but particularly to the former. There is always a tendency on the part of the teacher to spend too much time with upper grades. The present program includes 30 recitations daily, all very short. The teacher's time is merely dissipated by division among so many classes. The older children, without great expense, could be sent to the new consolidated school while the younger ones could remain as they now are until more satisfactory arrangements are completed.

While these one-teacher schools remain they should be made the best possible schools of the kind. Ample grounds, proper buildings, equipment, and well-trained teachers should be supplied. A greater amount of ability and more training on the part of the teacher is necessary in one-teacher schools than in the larger schools in order to overcome the handicap of organization and give the children an opportunity for good elementary education. Teachers therefore must be more carefully selected and better paid than those in the consolidated or city schools.

BUILDINGS FOR THE COLORED CHILDREN.

The school buildings at Clayhole, Pennick, and Sterling are the only ones for colored children which, in the opinion of the commission, can be made suitable for school use. In each of these unilateral lighting, proper heating and seating arrangements, and the erection of two sanitary toilets are immediate necessities. Consolidated schools should replace the one-room structures as soon as possible for the reasons given below. The plan for a new Rosenwald school combining the two schools at Union and Magnolia should not be further delayed. If possible, similar arrangements should be made at an early date for a school at St. Simmons and another one consolidating the Everett and Clayhole schools. If not Rosenwald schools. then two-teacher schools erected by the board on a similar plan should be provided. All of these buildings should be equipped with blackboards and other material along the lines previously suggested.

EQUIPMENT.

The commission would urge that in schools for Negroes as well as those for the whites sanitary toilets and pure water for drinking purposes be insisted upon. The commission has not said more in this report regarding the importance of these matters because it under

stands that the county board of health is rigidly to enforce its provisions concerning such matters.

School buildings should also be well heated by hot-water heating furnaces, or jacketed stoves. Plenty of blackboard of some reliable varietylate is best and most economical in the long run; globes. maps, supplementary readers, and reference books constitute the minimum equipment which should be procured for immediate use. Later, these essentials should be added to, either from public funds or through school and community organizations.

12. THE SHOWING MADE BY THE PUPILS OF BRUNSWICK AND GLYNN COUNTY IN THE STANDARD EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT TESTS GIVEN.

Until within a decade the results of the teaching activities of the school, expressed in terms of the progress of children in the subjects which the schools offer, have been largely a matter of personal opinion. No educational yardstick of precise character has been at hand by which efficiency could be judged and the relative standing of schools or of classes determined. Within a few years, however, tests have been devised and so standardized that it is now possible, in certain lines of school work, to compare the achievements of schools and of systems, giving thereby a fairly accurate basis for the appraisal of work within the restricted fields wherein the tests operate.

The commission gave four of these tests in all of the schools of Brunswick and in the Community school of Glynn County. The tests given were the Courtis test in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division processes operating with whole numbers: the Stone reasoning test in arithmetic: the Ayers spelling test: and the Monroe's silent reading test designed to test the rate of reading and the degree of comprehension. Each of these tests has been given under exactly the same condition in schools in all parts of the United States and to thousands of children. The results have been carefully tabulated, so that school officials now know what degree of speed and of accuracy the great majority of children are capable of reaching where the teaching practice has been efficient. By comparing the results which the children of the schools of Glynn obtained with the standard score obtained by many thousands of children it can be judged, in part at least, as to how efficient in these lines the teaching is in Glynn.

A. THE COURTIS TEST IN ARITHMETICAL PROCESSES.

The series consists of four tests printed on a four-page folder, one test to each page. Twenty-four examples of equal difficulty are given in each. A time limit is set for each test, 8 minutes for the

addition test, 4 minutes for the subtraction. 6 minutes for the multipli ation, and 8 minutes for the division test. Within these respective time limits each pupil tested is required to solve as many examples as he can. The papers are then marked for the number attempted (speed) and for the numbers which are correct (accuracy). In order that all tests may be standardized, no credit is given for examples incomplete or partially correct. The following are sample exercises of the four tests; the remaining examples of each are of equal difliculty: