100 years ago in Spokane: Schools superintendent proposes third high school

From our archive,

100 years ago

Schools Superintendent Orville C. Pratt recommended a third high school for Spokane.

It should be “in the eastern part of the city, north of the river, to accommodate 600 pupils.” It would join Lewis and Clark High School and North Central High School.

He also urged expanding the “gymnasium, bathing pool and shower accommodations” at Lewis and Clark, and expanding the gym at North Central. All high schools, he said, should have separate swimming pools for boys and girls.

He also proposed sweeping improvements at many of the area’s elementary schools, some of which were still heated with wood stoves and had outside toilets.

The total cost: between $117,000 and $362,000. Yet the superintendent’s report said Spokane could afford it, since Spokane’s per-capita wealth was exceeded by only a few western cities.

Why was high school enrollment growing, while elementary enrollment was flat?

“Seemingly, parents are coming to see more clearly the necessity of giving their children more education than the elementary school offers,” the superintendent’s report said.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1946: A United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of the U.N.’s headquarters.

2015: Nearly 200 nations meeting in Paris adopted the first global pact to fight climate change, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that didn’t do so.