THE FIRST SCHOOL YEAR: MARCH 9, 1880 to MARCH 31, 1881
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The Compiled Laws of Dakota Territory (1862) provided standards for the appointment of county superintendents, formation of school districts, and the examination and certification of teachers. It also gave superintendents the power to apportion tax money to school districts for the payment of teachers. [1] In Dakota Territory as a whole, it took over a decade for more than a handful of schools to be organized. In Kingsbury County, one of the first acts of the newly appointed county commissioners in 1880 was to insure that their children would have the privilege of a public education.
In 1880, laws governing the formation of school districts and the organization of schools within them had changed little since the first session laws of 1862. Once a superintendent decided on the boundaries of a school district, he prepared a notice of formation which was sent to the head of a household in that district. The superintendent instructed that this notice be posted in at least five public places for ten days prior to the date of the first organizational meeting, the date of which was specified in the notice. Following this first meeting, the citizens of the school district had sixty days in which to appeal the decision as to the organization of said district (if they didn’t want a district organized at the present time), to act on the decisions made at the meeting, or to begin a formal appeal process in opposition to specific decisions made.
On March 9, 1880, [2] Chairman Herbert R. Palmer appointed Amos Whiting as the first County Superintendent of Schools for a term to last until the end of the year. [3] On June 14, Whiting authorized the formation of the first school district in the county: School District No. 1 surrounding the village of Nordland (later Arlington). That same day, School District No. 2 was formed, comprising eighteen sections of land surrounding the village of De Smet. The first meeting of School District No. 2 was held “at the room known as the County Office in the [Charles] Ingalls Building” on July 27, 1880, at 7 p.m. [4]
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At the organizational meeting, it was the duty of the residents [5] in the district, both male voters and male and female parents or guardians of unmarried children of school age (5 to 21 years), to elect a director, a clerk, and a treasurer – their district school board. Once these offices were filled and the elected officials had qualified by proving residency and posting bonds, the school district was officially organized. [6] The law permitted the lapse of two years after organization before a school term must be taught in a district as long as there was an annual meeting of the directors, and also allowed up to two years to pass following a completed school term before a district would be declared null and void. For one year following organization, a district was entitled to its share of tax money, which could be held in the district treasury until such time as it was needed. The law required that a school term must begin within one year of the organization date if the district accepted apportionments, or the district must forfeit all funds paid into their treasury during that year.
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The superintendent laid the foundation for schools, but it was up to individual district officers and residents to see that a school site was chosen, teachers were hired, and terms were taught. Residents bore the financial burden of each school in the form of taxes on both land and personal property, the $1 school poll tax, plus bonds sold in order to pay for the building of schoolhouses. [7] The permanent school fund was implemented following the first legislative session as a tax levied upon the taxable real property of the people. This tax was never intended to meet all the expenses of public education, and in a territory made up largely of homesteaders who would not own their land for years, there was no way that it could do so. To avoid heavy taxation which homesteaders could ill afford, often land, labor, and supplies were voluntarily donated to the school districts.[8]
A district school board’s first job was to levy taxes and determine when they wanted their first term to be taught. If they wanted a term to begin soon, they were to decide on a location for the schoolhouse and to purchase, lease, or build a structure to be used. Each district was to have one schoolhouse only, yet provisions were made for the establishment of larger graded schools at such time as they should be needed. If numbers of children grew too large to accommodate one schoolhouse in a district, or if distances were too great for children to conveniently attend their district school, a petition was filed by residents asking for a division in the existing district whereby a new district would be formed from part of the old. Similarly, petitions were received from individuals asking that they personally be removed from one district and attached to another, or by residents of multiple school districts desiring to be combined into one.
The first school board of School District No. 2 consisted of John H. Carroll (director), Charles P. Ingalls (clerk), and Thomas H. Ruth (treasurer), with sixty-three children of school age residing in the district. By the next month, however, Ingalls and Carroll had been replaced. Although Charles Ingalls was currently living in De Smet, his homestead, and primary residence, was not part of School District No. 2, therefore he could not legally hold a school board position there.
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The new board consisted of Visscher V. Barnes (director), Edward H. Couse (clerk), and Thomas H. Ruth (treasurer). These men, being duly elected and sworn into office, began the task of finding a site for a schoolhouse to be built in the village of De Smet, realizing that it should be centrally located. John H. Carroll owned the tract of land which the board deemed most desirable, so they set about condemning his property and taking it for school purposes, since Carroll didn’t want to part with it. Carroll was awarded $140 in damages, and a two-acre site on the north side of Second Street between Poinsett and First Avenue became the property of School District No. 2 on September 25, 1880.
On October 1, the matter of schoolhouse grounds for De Smet settled, Superintendent Whiting proceeded to divide the rest of Kingsbury County into forty-nine school districts of varying sizes. Where there were homesteaders with school age children, the districts were smaller; whole sparsely occupied townships of thirty-six square miles were designated as single school districts for convenience. As Kingsbury County became settled and schools were in demand, these townships would be divided into multiple districts. It was the superintendent’s responsibility to review petitions made by settlers and approve the division or consolidation of school districts based on need. For the next five years, this rearranging of boundaries kept Amos Whiting (re-appointed in 1881 for a two year term) and his successor, George A. Williams (whose term began in January 1883), very busy indeed. [9]
Within three years, the original forty-nine districts formed in Kingsbury County had been divided into a total of ninety-two districts. All districts would not be organized until after the summer of 1885 and there would not be at least one term of school taught in each of these districts until years later. Frequent rearrangement of boundaries was both the cause and result of quarrels and struggles among residents, and school districts became very unequal in terms of area, school population, taxable property, and every other point of comparison imaginable.
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With school districts organized and schoolhouse sites selected came the need for qualified teachers. The 1862 Laws of Dakota provided for the certification of teachers by the county superintendents in Dakota Territory as follows:
He shall examine annually, all persons offering themselves as teachers of common schools in his county, in regard to moral character, learning, and ability to teach school, and he shall give to each person examined and found qualified to teach, a certificate signed by him officially, and any person receiving such certificate, shall be deemed a qualified teacher within the meaning of this act. [10]
The examination itself was left to the discretion of each county superintendent, although records show that questions were occasionally provided by the Territorial Superintendent of Public Instruction. There were no laws providing for the educational qualifications of the territorial or county superintendents; likewise there were no laws specifically defining the educational qualifications of teachers or regulating the age a candidate must be in order to obtain a certificate. Originally there was only one type of teaching certificate; the only difference in certificates issued being in the length of time they were valid for (from three months to one year), with length to be determined by the county superintendent in each case.
Early in the history of teacher certification, there appeared a need to differentiate the abilities of teachers in some way, a procedure which was recommended many years before actually becoming law in 1877. At this time, the system of first, second, and third grade teaching certificates was established. The graded system of teaching certificates had no bearing on the grade level a teacher was qualified to teach. [11] A teacher’s grade on a certificate merely reflected a level of proficiency on the teaching exam itself. Someone who earned a second grade certificate had scored higher (better) on their examination than someone who earned a third grade certificate. Recorded test scores indicate that the grading scale was quite lenient, with average grades of seventy percent correct answers qualifying a candidate for a third grade teaching certificate.
By 1880, a first grade certificate was valid for one year, a second grade certificate for six months, and a third grade certificate for three months or one school term, although length could again be set by the superintendent at his discretion, based on the length of the term a teacher might be hired to teach.
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Because each county superintendent typically determined the examination to which his candidates were subject, the result was examinations of varying degrees of difficulty and no uniformity in ability of teachers from county to county in Dakota Territory.
Over the years, the laws governing the certification of teachers became more limiting and specific, thus continuing the first measures of standardization in teacher examinations and certification. At first, power to grant teaching certificates was given to both county and territorial superintendents, yet a county superintendent had the power to grant certificates only to those who would teach in his county. In 1866, provisions were made for public examinations of teachers to be held on the last Saturdays in April and October of each year. By 1879, testing days had been changed to the last Tuesdays in April and October. In 1883, public testing days became the first Tuesday in April and the last Tuesday in September of each year. Originally, there was no fee to take a public exam; private exams cost one dollar, given to the examiner as payment for his trouble. By 1880, the fee for any public examination was one dollar, with private exams set at two dollars. Money collected was to be used at the discretion of the county superintendent.
At the first public examination of teachers in Kingsbury County on October 28, 1880, three candidates presented themselves: Willard L. Seelye, Florence A. Garland, and Jennie M. Ross. Seelye and Garland were awarded first grade certificates good for one year, Ross a second grade certificate good for six months. Two other teachers were examined privately, William B. D. Gray and Thomas H. Garvin. Garvin was awarded a first grade certificate and hired to teach District School No. 1 in Nordland. Gray was awarded a second grade certificate and hired to teach District School No. 35 northeast of Lake Henry and near Gray’s own homestead. [12]
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Florence Garland was hired to teach District School No. 2 in De Smet, but blizzards during the Hard Winter of 1880-1881 repeatedly interrupted classes. Reports show, however, that Miss Garland was visited in the classroom by Amos Whiting and Visscher Barnes on March 23, 1881. Whiting noted that “the register showed an enrollment of twenty-six students with a good average attendance. Pupils were orderly and attentive. Classes were handled especially in reading and language and progress seemed to have been made. The school room was large, light, and convenient and well seated with patent seats having folding desks.” [13]
Two of these twenty-six students were Carrie and Laura Ingalls.
In The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder introduced Florence Garland as the first teacher in De Smet, writing that both Laura and her sister Carrie began the term in November after it had been in session a week. Wilder never recounted that there were classes at all after the trains stopped running due to the harsh weather, yet the term had obviously been resumed in some capacity prior to the superintendent’s visit in March 1881. Perhaps Laura and Carrie simply didn’t attend any classes after the initial closing of the school that winter or Wilder chose not to complicate her narrative with a return to school during the winter, knowing that the details of the school term wouldn’t fit in well with the overall themes of isolation and depravation so prevalent in her story.
Notes:
1. Laws of Dakota, 1862, Sections 1–8.
2. In Little Town on the Prairie, Wilder mentioned a meeting of commissioners held in order to organize the county which was rapidly being settled. She placed the first meeting after the Hard Winter, an entire year later than it historically occurred on March 9, 1880.
3. Record of County Commissioners of Kingsbury County, Dakota Territory, March 9, 1880.
4. Record of Superintendent of Public Schools, Kingsbury County, 3-5.
5. Any male over the age of twenty-one or female parent or guardian over the age of twenty-one who had resided in a school district for five days was eligible to vote on school matters.
6. Since the school board handled the money used to run the school, bond money assured that there would be money to run the school if a board member misappropriated funds in the school treasury.
7. This tax was one dollar collected from every male over the age of twenty-one in the county.
8. School lands were Sections 16 and 36 of each Township, set aside to be sold for the benefit of the schools. These lands were not to be sold for less than ten dollars per acre and were not to be sold until after statehood had been achieved.
9. Amos Whiting’s term ended December 31, 1880. W. L. Alexander was elected as Superintendent in January 1881, and resigned January 13, 1881. Amos Whiting was then re-appointed.
10. Laws of Dakota, 1862, Chapter 81, Section 8, 454.
11. By 1883, several schools in Kingsbury County had adopted a graded school system, typically first, second, third, and primary grades in the school, with first grade containing the most advanced students.
12. Record of Superintendent of Public Schools, Kingsbury County, 31, 36-37.
13. Ibid., 39.
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Copyright © 1999 by Nancy S. Cleaveland - All Rights Reserved. |
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