Rehabilitatio n of the Schools 



ALFRBU RONCOVIERI, Saperlntendent of School* 



MANY thorny questions arise in the ordinary course of school admin- 

 istration, many difficult problems must be solved by laws other than 

 the rule of thumb, many Gordian knots are to be severed. But 

 those problems in our city have of late been so deeply involved and 

 so insistent of solution that I vy^ell believe that since the birth of time 

 few men have ever had to cope v^ith the like of them. This situation in our 

 school affairs is, of course, the sequel to the illuminated page which au- 

 thoress Dame Nature chose to write for us with a large, free hand, original 

 octavo edition, San Francisco, April 18, 1906. 



San Franciscans have always been proud and loyal to their schools. 

 We had developed what we believed to be a symmetrical structure from 

 kindergarten to university, or to the still greater school of life. The resto- 

 ration of this beautiful edifice, now so marred, has been our Herculean 

 task. For this educational edifice of ours has sustained a severe blow in 

 the destruction of property and the interruption of classwork. The money 

 loss to the department is reckoned at $1 ,270,000; the sum necessary to erect 

 and equip a sufficient number of modern school structures to meet the 

 requirements both of attendance and the building ordinance is estimated 

 at $5,116,570. We had no insurance money to serve as a nest-egg, be- 

 cause the policy of the city government for many years had been to assume 

 its own risk on all municipal buildings. We have had to face a sweeping 

 reduction of the usual tax-levy and rental revenues, which even in the 

 best of times had been insufficient to enable us to erect new and substan- 

 tial buildings as required; hence recourse to the long and cumbersome 

 process of bond-issues had been found necessary in previous years. Such 

 a situation was truly fruitful in anxiety. 



In the midst of this perplexity we were indeed grateful to receive mes- 

 sages from nearly every quarter of the United States, Galveston foremost 

 among them, conveying spontaneous offers of assistance, and suggesting 

 that the friends of education throughout our land raise a fund with which 

 to rebuild our burned schoolhouses. We gladly accepted these overtures 

 and organized a "School Reconstruction Committee," consisting of the 

 Mayor, the members of the Board of Education, and the Superintendent 

 of Schools, to receive all money so contributed and to devote it exclusively 

 to the work of school rehabilitation. The committee immediately began 

 the dissemination of material showing the exact educational conditions in 

 San Francisco. The exceedingly sympathetic reception accorded this 

 movement indicates conclusively that the committee's efforts have not 

 been viewed as a beggar's plea for "more," but that, on the contrary, to 

 quote the words of President Schaeffer of the National Educational Asso- 

 ciation, "the cause is worthy, the need is great; and there should be a 

 liberal response." The noteworthy feature of this building fund, next to 

 the spontaneous generosity manifested, is that its receipts will be Imme- 

 diately available for school-reconstruction purposes. 



To prepare against the close of the long-enforced vacation, the Board 

 of Education labored diligently upon the erection of temporary buildings 

 to accommodate the school population. Seventeen of these structures 

 have now been completed and are occupied. In advance of the date fixed 

 for the reassembling of the classes, the board revoked all appointments 

 of teachers, placed upon an unassigned list all those still serving their 

 probationary period of two years, and reassigned to the schools all regular 

 teachers upon the strict and impartial basis of seniority of service in the 

 department. 



The public schools of San Francisco reopened on Monday, July 23d, 

 with an attendance that was remarkably heavy. The number leaped from 

 24,500 In the first week to 30,000 at the end of the second. Hundreds of 

 these students come from their temporary abiding-places in nearby towns, 

 thus demonstrating both their loyalty to their city and their confidence 

 in her schools. 



