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From Central The crowded conditions at the Central High school have become intolerable. The building was constructed to accommodate 800. There are now there over 1300. Every foot of available space is occupied, and between one and two hundred pupils rightfully belong here are now necessarily accommodated in the Central Grammar school building. the corridors have been turned into class rooms. rooms in that building in which artificial light is constantly required are regularly used as class rooms. Such conditions can only make for unhealthful and inefficiency as well as increase danger in case of fire New high school accommodations are imperative. It therefore becomes necessary to consider whether we shall continue to develop the high schools of Grand Rapids solely along the lines of academic instructions heretofore followed or whether we shall undertake so to enlarge our facilitates as to tenable us to meet the requirements of modern high school education, and provide the children of grand Rapids with high school facilities equal to those afforded in other cities of similar size an prosperity. Your committee has procured the following information form fifteen cities, but one of which is substantially large than Grand Rapids, showing the population of each city, the cost of the high school buildings exclusive o the land in each city, and whether or not they have high school manual training o industrial training. These statistics, which are subjoined, show beyond any question that Grand Rapids is behind other cities of similar size in the matter of high school educational development. Your committee respectively recommends that the board provide a new high school, to be so constructed as to be fireproof and to provide for the accommodation of not less than 1500 pupils in the usual academic studies now taught, and also that it may gradually enable us to give instruction to elective in those branches of manual training (not vocational or industrial) as are usually taut in high schools Such a building will enable us in a reasonable time to bring our high schools to the standard found in cities of like size. So far as your committee has bee able to ascertain, the added expense of this manual training department, fully equipped, will not be more than twenty-five per cent in excess of the cost of the building without such equipment. Your committee is satisfied that the additional advantages to be gained from the gradual introduction of manual training in hour high schools will more than justify the addition expense. Your committee recommends that the new high school so to be erected, to be located upon the Fountain street school lot. The reasons for this location are the following:
1. It is practically at the center of population on the east side. 2. It is nearly at the geographical center of that side of the city. More than two-thirds of the entire number of high school students reside within a radius of one and a half miles of this location. 3. It is near enough to the street railways to provide easy access; at the same time at such distance as to prevent disturbance from the noise of cards. 4. It is the logical location for the first high school. Sooner or later other high schools must be established on the west side and a the south and north ends of the city. 5. It would place the new building on the finest and largest lot owned by the board, where the setting and grade would permit the construction of a dignified and artistic building worthy of the city. 6. The necessary additional land can now be had without the expense of buying and removing buildings. the lot now owned b the board has a frontage on Fountain street of 393 1/5 feet and a dept in its deepest pat of 350 feet. Adjoining this lot is additional land now vacant and which can be acquired sufficient to make a lot of ample side, to which access may be obtained both from the north and the south. 7. It is readily accessible to the Houseman Field, the future student athletic center. 8. It will obviate the inconsistent exterior appearance, inconvenient arrangement an awkward grade lines which would exist in the construction of an addition of the present Central High school. 9. It would place the students a little farther from the downtown district and its harmful influences. 10. It would furnish a new completely equipped high school of modern design. the present high school is sixteen years old, and has been out built in every city of like size. 11. The present Central High school can easily be altered to a central grammar school building, enabling us to dispense with the present grammar school now over forty years old and illy adapted to modern requirements. 12. The present high school would provide, when so altered, quarters for a manual training center for the grade schools, offices for the supervisors and directors, and a good room centrally located for teachers' meetings and instruction. The balance has been edited for length: 1. Purchase or condemn the north 82 feet of lot 19 which is 82 feet N/S by 146 1/2 feet E/W in the northwest corner of the present school lot fronting Briggs court and will give access from the school to Lyon Street. 2. Purchase or condemn the south 300 feet of lot 21. 3. No number 3 used just --------- 4. Construct a fireproof modern high school for 1500 students as a modern manual training high school. 5. Remove the present grammar school, grade the lot to the level of the first floor of the present High School, and convert the present high school building for 7th, 8th and 9th grades.
From article School History From Heading History and the City of GrandRapids From web site: MyCityofGrandRapids.info
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