UNIFYING SCHOOL HOUSE AND CITY HALL
Mcmullin, J. W.
Unifying School Home and City Hall "The Ogden Plan" Is the Newest Suggestion For Municipal Administration Combining Advantages of Commission and City Manager Forms Economy? Efficiency? Yes—-and...
...and we have sort, of hoped, that, somehow, ho would keep on and make the connection at his maturity with will enough and sense enough and educational impulse enough to participate in using well and directing aright that other section of the system of our social co-operation that we call "Government...
...This is, of course, just another way of saying, that, as we have been supplying special educational plants wherein aldermen, state legislators, national congressmen, might go to school to one another in the preparation for the examination of their voting, so we must now avail ourselves of equipment whereby citizens may go to school to one another in preparation for the examination of our intelligence at the ballot box...
...It has been of use to him through childhood for about a third of his journey, and then dumped him off to make his way, disunited from his fellows and unaided, through the dangerous wilderness of youth...
...Under this single commission, and appointed by them, is one Municipal Executive, in whose office are combined the functions of Civic Secretary to the organized citizenship, General Director of the recreational life of the city, as this becomes municipalized, and Superintendent of the children's instruction...
...Suffice it to say that things got "bad enough...
...The adoption of the initiative and referendum gives to the citizenship the charactar of a legislature...
...From the other end, the institution of Government, the system of citizenship participation and co-operation in social control has been steadily building back toward identification with education...
...Recently the progress of this section of the system has been rapid...
...BUT it remained for Ogden to have this lack of unity between the public school administration and the administration of the rest of the public business produce such general and widespread antagonism as to make efficient co-operation impossible and unification obviously necessary...
...THE Ogden Plan combines the ad-vantages of the Commission and the City Manager forms...
...Under the supervision of the Municipal Executive and his assistant special supervisors, the work of the district officers is co-ordinated, —the district municipal officers who serve as organizing clerks or secretaries to the citizens in their use of the schoolhouses as civic headquarters, as directors of the organized training of the youth and promoters of recreational activities, in addition to their established function as principals of the public schools...
...Moreover, in many a town throughout the country the school board is virtually an irresponsible body, a little off-shoot of the other board, not chosen directly, nor responsible directly to the parents of the children committed to its charge...
...Wretched inefficiency in municipal administration due to traditfon-born maladjustment of machinery, was -general before the Galveston flood...
...The result is that, instead of the people having two commissions in charge of sections of their instrument of social co-operation, there will be one body, elected by the people at large and responsible for the administration of all of the public business—not excepting the most important...
...HITHERTO, the common institution of Education has served the individual about as did the unfinished section of the Union Pacific sixty years ago...
...and so gives promise of high quality in the body which is at once the Municipal Commission and the Board of Education...
...THE outstanding feature of the Ogden Plan is the abolition of the separate School Board, or—it you prefer—the abolition of the Municipal Commission...
...It means more harmonious correlation between the various sorts of municipal expression, the police service and sanitary inspection, for instance...
...At Ogden, Utah, on May 11, 1914, was officially projected a union of elemental significance...
...There, that day, the two sections of railroad which, under the names "Union Pacific" and "Central Pacific" had started from...
...and "Government," have similarly been building steadily toward each other from origins wide apart...
...And then Ogden showed its capacity for leadership among cities by saying in answer to the challenge of its situation: "No, we won't just patch things up and cover things up, and hush things up—and suffer along (as most towns do...
...Similarly, there is not a city, town, or village in the United States in which the lack of unity between the public educational enterprise and the other parts of the public business administration is not causing monstrous waste of the community's resources, producing confusion between departments and friction that tends toward inflamation...
...The distribution of functions which belongs to the one and the centralization of responsibilities which marks the other, have their advantageous principles embodied together in this plan...
...So, and in a hundred other ways, the section of "Government" has been building toward the section ot "Education...
...the adoption of the recall makes the citizenship a judiciary...
...We'll ask a body of disinterested educators, headed by the United States Commissioner of Education, to appoint a committee of investigation to come here and take a good, calm look at our problem and tell us what its solution is, as that solution appears to men who look with fresh eyes and who have no personal axes to grind...
...The adoption of the Ogden plan means, quite obviously, the saving of thousands of dollars to the tax payers in the avoidance of expensive duplications of every sort...
...Yes—-and Democracy By J. W. McMULLIN AT OGDEN, Utah, on May 10, 1869, a comparatively unimportant union took place...
...points seventeen hundred miles apart and, through more than twenty years had crept toward each other, were joined into the first continuous iron way across the continent...
...In many a town, too, the division of public administration between the municipal board and the school board, makes the functions of each so unimportant as to attract to them, and especially to the school board, only the service of second or fourth rate persons,— and so on,—and bo on,—the situation getting worse, the farther you go into the actual conditions under dual responsibility as they exist in the age town...
...In the hands of this single commission, adequately paid and giving their Pull time to the work, the business administration of the public schools (fully used for the civic co-operations of adults, the training of youth, and the recreation of the whole community, as well as for the instruction of children) is identified with, and made the machinery of, the city's self-direction, self-control, and self-service of every sort...
...But if we compare the public school system of today with what it was even a few years ago, it is apparent that there has been a steady extension of this section of the system toward continuous service as the means of progressive social integration...
...There, this day, by recommendation of a nationally representative commission, was planned the union into one continuous system of the two great sections of the essential machinery of civilization which, under the names "Education...
...but all out jest-growed-like-Topsy towns endured it until that wild wash of water dashed one municipality into consciousness that the business of getting things done in common interest is too important to be made the sport and contention of partisan gamesters...
...The extension of voting responsibility hrings to the periodical examination of intelligence upon public matters that we call "elections" a constantly larger number of citizens...
...and each of these implies the necessity of citizenship organization for deliberation as the prerequisite to voting...
...Put it either way...
...preventing, on the one hand, efficiency of the children's civic instruction, and on the other, efficiency in adult civic construction, and causing or allowing to exist, the demoralization of the community by the fact that under this dualism of control there is nobody responsible for the constructive provision of wholesome recreation opportunities and training, especially for the youth between school age and adulthood...
...and Galveston's acute necessity gave it leadership among cities by forcing it to use its common sense and capacity for invention...
...Fortunately for Ogden, the United States Commissioner of Education, whose was the final voice in the selection of this investigating commit-tee, recommended that its personnel include, not only "inside" school men, but also students of community problems in their relation to the business of education...
...THINGS are good if they are 1 only bad enough...
...This plan secures the short-ballot advantage of eliminating one whole set of elections...
...tical application tration of...
...It was Edward J. Ward who, with the earnest and industrious co-operation of Professor Roylance, made the inquiry into fundamentals and gathered the material, financial, social, industrial, moral, as well as "educational" (using that term in its old narrow sense) which culminated by logical and absolute necessity in the recommendation by the committee of this new plan of unified administration of all of the city's business...
...With three "regular" school men, W. S. Deffenbaugh, George A. Eaton and Charles S. Meeks, were appointed for this work Edward J. Ward of the University extension Division of Wisconsin and W. G. Roylance, Professor of Sociology in the University of Utah...
...It would be superfluous to go, here, into the gossipful details of personal attacks and other expressions of bitterness that develop from this central dis-co-ordination...
...It means better equipment, more worthy support and higher efficiency in the the superintendent...
Vol. 6 • June 1914 • No. 24
