Pittsburgh school affairs are under a cloud but the outside world
should understand certain facts, notably that the cloud itself is
stirred up, to some extent at least, by interests using it as a
cloak for their operations. These interests are two-fold: the first,
political, embracing the faction opposed to Senator Oliver; the
second, partly political and partly personal, embracing the men from
whose hands the school affairs of Pittsburgh were wrested by the
Legislature two years ago. Under the old system school buildings and
maintenance were in control of petty ward boards; in some districts
the schools were excellent but in others waste, mismanagement and
graft were rampant. Under the new system many of the old directors
secured election as ward school visitors and, shorn of their spoils,
have been bitterly opposed to the control of the small, centralized
executive board appointed by the judges of the Allegheny county
courts.
Charges brought against Supt. S. L. Heeter by a housemaid gave
politicians and ousted directors their chance to start an agitation
for a return to conditions under which they throve. These charges
were given publicity by Coronor Jamison, president of the old
central board. Superintendent Heeter demanded a court trial and was
acquitted. Afterward a committee of citizens, including the president
of the chamber of commerce and two clergymen, was appointed to
investigate the superintendent’s fitness to remain in office. This
committee has not yet reported.
Whether Superintendent Heeter is retained in office or not is aside
from the main issue—the revolution in the conduct of the Pittsburgh
schools in the past year and a half. The new board has been obliged
to spend $150,000 in transforming indescribably dirty old fire-traps,
with poor light, worse ventilation and unspeakable toilets, into
schools that could be used with decency.
The great mass of Pittsburgh’s good citizens refuse to get excited.
Not all the scare heads of the interested newspapers, the _Leader_
and the _Press_, or mass-meetings and parades of children arranged
by still more interested individuals, have befogged the recognition
by Pittsburgh people of the improvement in school affairs since
1911. The exaggeration of the children’s strike in the press of
the country, however, has been broadcast. _Collier’s Weekly_, for
example, that usually accurate publication, prints a picture with
the explanation that “a strike of 50,000 school pupils paralyzed
the Pittsburgh school system.” There was marching of children; but
when an effort was made to discover the identity of the men who the
children reported were urging them on, the agitators quickly dropped
out of sight. For a few days attendance dropped off in certain
sections, but many parents had kept their children at home for fear
of their becoming involved.
The situation has been tense, but social workers in Pittsburgh do
not anticipate that the Legislature will respond to the manufactured
agitation and put the schools back in the hands of the ward boards
whose long regime left conditions that can not be remedied in years.
A bill introduced this week would make the central board elective.
Theoretically there are arguments in support of the election-at-large
of members of the centralized board, but the appointive board was
regarded as a necessary measure if the schools were to be freed from
the domination of the old boards.
Efficiency has been the new board’s watch-word. Janitors and teachers
are not appointed on the basis of political “pull.” Already the high
school attendance has increased over 60 per cent. Manual training,
cooking and sewing classes are now found not only in wealthy
districts, but also in sections where boys and girls need such
training most.
The one point in which the new board has been weak was the failure to
establish sympathetic relations with the public in the reforms it is
putting forward and to utilize publicity as a constructive force in
the securing of them. This indifference to public opinion, although
only apparent, has been mistaken in many quarters as contempt,
especially because of the autocratic personalties of two members of
the board. It is perhaps unfortunate that the board’s president,
David Oliver, is a brother of Senator Oliver, thus giving a decided
political turn to newspaper discussion. He was the logical man for
the place, a leading member of the state school commission which
drafted the new code. As president of the old board in Allegheny, now
the north side, he had helped to make the schools of that section far
superior to those of the old city; this, in spite of the fact that
civic conditions in Allegheny were even worse than in Pittsburgh.
The unfortunate Heeter affair is in fact but an incident in the
forward movement toward responsible municipal rule in Pittsburgh.