The Alaska daily empire., 1917-10-13

wei rendered. Grover '. w nm, president of the Juneau School Board, delivered a short address on the history of the public schools of Juneau and especially of the new building, followed by Joe Acklen, president of the Senior High School Student Body and by Superintendent A. M Mathews, on behalf of the schools. The Orchestra rendered two other selections and the pro- gram was closed by the audience singing America
 Board Member Speaks.
 Grover C. Vim, in speaking on the history of the Juneau public schools, said:
 ''The school board feels it their duty to give a report and account ing to the citizens of the town of what they, as your agents and ser wants, have. expended your money for, and in this relation l am act ing as the spokesman of the board. In order to appreciate this l will give very short review of the eff forts which have been put forth in the past for a modern school house and which have been at last real ized in the erection and completion of this building.
 Prom the time that a public school was established in Juneau in 1882 or 1883, until the incor- ;A, 1f ho in, school system, similar to all other institutions guided by a bureau at Washington, D. C., was very much of a failure. Once in while we had a good teacher. l think during the seven years I attended the gov ernment school we had one at least, I don't remember any more.
 Select First Board
 After the incorporation of our municipality in 1900 and our citi- zens given the right to choose their town council and school board, ad- vancement along educational as well as other civic lines has been very rapid After the election of the first board of education, consist ing of w. F. Robinson, F. T. Ham mond and w. w. Casey, they i'm mediately organized and ordered an addition built to the old government school building. This being neces- sary for the number of pupils the school had to accommodate and to allow for the segregation of the ;e building, however, proved made quate to the fast growing con- ditions of the community and school and in 1902 a second floor was added. This building remained un- changed until last spring when it was wrecked to make room for our present building.
 Miss Emma s. Yule. superintend ant of the schools from 1902 to 1909 recommended in her report for the year 1903 to the school board that a modern school building be erected containing sufficient labora- tories to carry on the work covered ! library, gymnasium, auditorium and so forth, so that the advancing needs of the city and community could be properly cared for.
 "At this time, four years after the establishing a public school sys- lem, our high school was offering four years of high school work and the student had the election of either a scientific or classical course of study and certificate of gradu- ation entitled holder to admission to the Freshman Class of the Uni versity of Washington without ex- animation. I mention this fact tc illustrate to certain extent the progress our schools had made un- der the supervision of Miss Yule and very capable corps of teach CTS. I might mention that Miss Yule very consistently incorporated her recommendations for a new school building in all of her fol- lowing reports.
 Congress Appealed to.
 No definite movement was made, however, to follow this recommen- dation until 1914, when our city council after giving the matter con siderable thought and study decided to ask Congress for the necessary legislation in order to issue bonds for the sum of $75,000. The mon ey arising from the sale of the sale of the bonds to be used in the erecting and furnishing of a new