The Portland daily press., 1895-09-30

selected to confer with the grading COM
mittee of the district and the trustees of
the Normal school have attended to their
duty and beg leave to submit the follow
ing:
Friday evening, September 30, meet
ing was held at Normal school building,
State Superintendent Stetson, Trustees
Hinkley and Robertson, the grading COM
mittee of the district Messrs. Emery,
Waterhouse and Millett, and your entire
committee being present. After full
discussion of the school matters, 1t was
unanimously voted BY the grading
commIoueo and your committee, TO recon-
mend to the district the adoption of
article two, Of the warrant to take effect
at the end Of the present school year.
This action was approved by the members
Of the board of trustees present.
Respectfully submitted,
"EDWIN A. SOULE,
~. j. G. HANNAFORD,
"H. B. JOHNSON.
"FRED W. HARDING.
"GEO. H. WENTWORTH,
.ACommittee.
But this versionsof the lesson was not
accepted as true by all the members of
the school, and some' of them were SO
energetic in their denunciation Of it, that
at the close of the recitation, Mr.essSssGss
Bolton spoke Of the session as one In
which, to use plain English, men had
virtually been called liars.
The system by which the Gorham
schools have been conducted as model or
practice schools for the Normal school
was explained in the PRESS of last We'd
nesday 1t was also told how, some of
the parents having become dissatisfied
with the operation of the system, wanted
to repeal vote passed in 1891 by which
the grammar grades we're made part of
the model schools, and had a meeting of
the district called for that purpose. At
that meeting the committee by whom the
above report was signed was appointed,
and it was over the recommendation OF
it's report that the discussion of Saturday
evening at times waxed very warm.
Messrs George B. Emery and J. A.
Waterman of the grading committee in
dignantly denied that they had agreed to
the proposition embodied IN the report.
They had agreed they said, to PROPOSE
tion that the present system should be
left undisturbed until the March meet
ing and that then or at the end of the
school year action should be taken III re-
gard to it. They had not agreed to q
proposition to take this action now and
defer its effect until the close of the
school year. Principal Corthell of the
Normal school, by whom the proposition
was originally made, also emphatically
declared that 1t was not in the form in
which the committee had put it, but was
as stated by Nessrs. Emery and Water
house. Mr.. S. B. Guthrie and A. H.
Sampson took the same ground, and Mr.
John A. Hinkley, the resident trustee of
the Normal school, backed it up by read
ing the following letter from State
Superintendent Stetson:
"Augusta, September %, 1895.
ssMr. John A. Hinkley, Gorham, Me-:
ssDear Sir-At the conference held ut
the Gorham Normal school building
Friday evening. September 20, 1895, there
were present three members of the board
of trustees of the State Normal schools,
the principal of the Gorham Normal
school, the grading committee of the
village of Gorham and the committee Of
five appointed by the village districts at a
meeting held September IA, 1895.
"The object of the conference was to
discuss the relations existing between the
model schools of the Gorham Normal
school and the village district.
"After a careful discussion of the
whole qustion, in which each member of
the two committees named above, partici-
pated to considerable length, the PROPOSE
tion given below was unanimously
adopted, and the meeting adjourned with
the understanding on the part of the
trustees that the matter was settled as
follows:
The trustees were to place competent
teacher in charge of the highest division
of the grammar grade of the model
school The members of the two COM
lnittees present were to recommend to the
district, at meeting to be held on the
evening of September 2S, 1895, that the
district maintain it's present relations
with the Normal school trustees, and con-