Mondovi High School - Mirror Yearbook (Mondovi, WI)

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necessary requirements, we have lost nearly $1,400 of Federal Aid for Agriculture purposes, a sum which is badly needed. In the second place, our school building is in such a weak and tumble-down condition as to be an eye-sore to all public-minded citizens, a source of danger to its occupants, and a general discredit to our city. It is giving us a bad name among other schools. A rep resentative of the American Hook Concern of Chicago who has visited every high school in the state has been quoted to me as having said. “The City of Moiulovi has one of the very few old tumble-down, ramshackle high school buildings still in service in the State.” Anyone walking along the upper floor of the structure will shake the whole building from top to bottom. In certain parts of the building the floors have fallen away from the walls from two to three inches. Certain kinds of singing cannot be indulged in, and large and enthusiastic mass meetings are impossible. While I do not wish to be considered radical or quoted as having said that the building would collapse this year, next year, or within five years. I must still assert that with the physical corn! tlons as they are, Mondovi High School cannot maintain for long its customary high educational standard. Especially will we realize this fact when we consider the great difficulty we are yearly expe iencing in securing competen teachers a difficulty that is increasing year by year. We find that in spite of our conservative policy we have been unable to keep up with the times, to save enough money to meet the increased demands of all teachers. Then too, it is natural for a teacho” to prefer a position where she is surrounded with better conditions, where she need teach only the subjects for which she is hired, and is not overworked or overcrow’ded. We find also that the members of our faculty are being offered very attractive salaries by other and larger schools, and it is very doubtful whether the school boa d can keep them an other year without outside help, without assistance from those who are receding full benefit from our school facilities, but are not paying their share of the costs. Briefly then, the situation that confronts our city is this: Mondovi has found that its high school is overcrowded, is in a bad condition, and lacks the funds sufficient to hire proper teachers. It has further discovered that these difficulties have arisen at least in part from the presence of country children in its schools, that without their attendance, there would probably be sufficient room and equipment to provide for the education of its own children. Should we then bar out all country children from our schools? No! Such a course would be repugnant to the citizens of the country districts and of our city alike. Too few of those children are attending high school as it is. In the past our policy has been to encourage all such attendance; tut we can do this no longer, for if they should

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THE VALEDICTORY By Raymond Evans CITIZENS OF MONDOVI AND THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITY. I wish to bring to your attention tonight a matter which |g of the greatest importance to our city and vicinity, and one in which I am sure you are vitally interested, inasmuch as you are all immediately concerned. Mondovi has been brought face to face with a duty which it cannot avoid, a need which. in my opinion, is one of the greatest that ever can arise in a city, for it affects the whole welfare of its youth, and thus the safety of the nation. I have only praise and thanks for the taxpayers of this city and school district for the splendid manner in which they have responded to every call upon them in the interest of education. They have done everything in their power. Through their generosity our High School has been able to reach a place in the front rank of schools of its size in the state, and, although handicapped by the lack of a proper building, it has been able to pay such salaries and provide such equipment as to maintain an educational standard that has been scarcely surpassed by many of the larger schools. Tn the past, the policy of our school management has been to disregard physical difficulties, and think only of the scholastic standing of the school. These men have realized that to erect a new school building in addition to providing the necessary salaries for its faculty would be to place a burden upon the people which would be almost impossible for them to bear. Given the alternative of a modern school plant equipped with a weak and inefficient faculty, and keeping the same old building supplied with the best talent obtainable, they have chosen the latter. And in the main this policy has been a wise one. But the time has come at last when it must be abandoned for one more constructive. Conditions are now such as to demand it. In the first place our high school is so overcrowded as to interfere seriously with the course of instruction. No teacher can feel certain of being allowed to remain in her own deoartment. She must be prepared to teach any class in any room that is not needed more urgently by some other class. No class room can be reserved for the purposes for which it was intended. During the past year, divisions of English, Agriculture and Latin received inst uetion in t’ e H's’orv Room. The English room was used for English. Geography and certain divisions of Commercial work. The Laboratory was used for Agriculture work The Commercial and Domestic Science Rooms, though located in the basement of another building and already overcrowded. were assigned to certain other classes, and even the School Library Room was brought into use as a recitation room for a class in I atin IV. Moreover, because we have been unable to meet the

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come, we would be unable to take care of them. In the past, we have sent out representatives to urge the country children to enter some high school; but such a policy would now be little less than foolhardy, for our high school is already filled to capacity. The only alternative remaining, then, is equal taxation for school purposes. It is true that every country child pays a tuition fee of $72.00 a year, but this amount is not sufficient to pay the bare current expense of educating him. No provision whatever is made for improving the facilities for that education. Therefore, if improvements are to be made, all such expenses must be met by the city and school district. This is hardly fair, for inasmuch as they receive the full benefit of our educational facilities, it is only right and just that the country districts should pay their share of all such costs. T would therefore advocate that a Joint High School District be formed, comprising the city and the territory that surrounds it to a distance of at least five or six miles; and that all property within this district be taxed to build a new and modern rchool plant, and provide equipment and talent such as will enable our children to receive a better and broade education that would ever be possible otherwise. But even after we have secured a new school building and a consolidated high school, our need will not have been entirely filled. We need a system that will not only keep in touch with the child for a bare six hours a day, five days a week and nine months in a year; we need one which will reach the life of the pupil in after-school hours as well. What amusements arc orovided for children? Too often they are left to their own devices to hunt out their amusements. and the result is too well known. Why should not the city provide proper harmless entertainments sunerintended by persons especially trained for this work, through which its child life can work off surplus exuberance? Whv not take away all desire for evil habits bv providing the nroper environment to counteract them9 Why not mold the thoughts and tastes of our children through good public concerts and lectures? For the sake of the crowing children of Mondovi and vlcinitv whose educational advantsces must otherwise he greatly restricted, for the sake of the taxpayers of Mondovi who have responded in the past and who are now so unselfishlv responding w'ith financial aid: fo” tho sake of our nst?on whose future depends so vitally upon a tra’ued and eniightened c,-tizenrv. will r ot vou who live outside our school district loin w5th us Ik the support of a school system which shall »n no wav fall be’ow the b’ch standard which we have alw'avs maintained? SEVTOB9 OF 19?ft:- We are met together as a class for the last time. We have now' come to the finad mnm°pt of on- school life when we must nart and say adieu. It is with mingled pride and re-