$30. The number of different pupils enrolled during the year was two hundred and ten, and the average attendance one hundred and nine. There were three hundred and ninety-four persons of school age in the district.[1]
The support of the school was as follows:
$271 80
480 79
325 00
30 00
The schoolhouse was valued at $2,000, and there was no library, maps, charts or apparatus. Two private schools were noted, one of academic grade, with two teachers (Arnold's school), and one of primary grade.[2]
The schoolhouse "needs repairing, not sufficient room to accommodate more than one-third of the pupils of district."
"The most urgent needs are good houses, competent teachers and qualified officers."
At the annual school meeting in April, 1874, a "proposition to levy a tax to support a free school for at least six months in the year and to repair the schoolhouse, was defeated, ninety-eight voting against and only thirty-six for it." This is the first mention of a free school that we meet with. The time for it had not arrived. As to the other feature of the proposed measure it is probable that many opposed it because they were in favor of a wholly new schoolhouse.
From this time forward the question of a new building was the issue in the educational politics of the town. That it was becoming a serious question is indicated in
- ↑ Clerk's reports 1874. Kindly placed at the writer's disposal by county superintendent W. M. Miller.
- ↑ This was the school of Miss Ella C. Sabin. She had arrived in Eugene about November, 1873, with her father's family. Her school, held during the winter and spring, was very popular. The family returned to Wisconsin, out Miss Sabin went from Eugene to Portland, where she worked for many years, a portion of the time as city superintendent. In 1891 she returned to Wisconsin where she has won national fame as president of the Milwaukee-Downer College.
