OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE STATE OF MAINE. 1847. AUGUSTA: WM. T. JOHNSON,.....PRINTER TO THE STATE. FIRST REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION. ALTHOUGH We do not understand the law under which we act to require us to make our annual report until the month of April, 1848, we yet deem it advisable, at this first meeting of the legislature after our organization, to lay before that body some account of our doings, and to suggest such alterations in the laws, and such new provisions, as seem to us necessary for beginning that improvement in the public school system of the state, to effect which we suppose the act to have been passed. We therefore present to you, to be laid before the legislature, this first report of the board of education of the state of Maine. Pursuant to the statute passed July 27th, 1846, the members elect of the board of education met at the senate chamber in Augusta on the sixteenth day of December, A. D. 1846, and, after having been duly qualified, organized by the election of Hon. Stephen Emery, of Oxford county, chairman, and Rev. William T. Savage, of Aroostook county, clerk. It appearing that, at the conventions in the counties of Lincoln and Washington, a majority of the towns in those counties were not represented, and that therefore two vacancies existed in the board, the Hon. Benjamin Randall, of Bath, and Aaron Hayden, Esq., of Eastport, were elected to fill those vacancies, having been recommended by the conventions of the counties respectively in which they reside. The board, in farther pursuance of the statute, proceeded to the election of a secretary, and made choice, unanimously, of William G. Crosby, Esq., of Belfast, to fill that office, who, having signified his acceptance, was qualified, and entered upon the discharge of its duties. Having spent several days in discussing the various topics connected with the system of public school education in this state, particularly those mentioned in the statute by which we were constituted; having communicated freely to each other our views upon these topics, and the information which we respectively possessed on the state of public school education in the several localities where we reside; and having examined, as accurately as our means would permit, the ground set apart for our labors, we proceeded to assign the consideration of the various topics connected with the subject to committees of the board. We also requested the secretary of the board to prepare and issue to the various school committees, throughout the state, blank forms of returns, containing such inquiries touching the present state of the public schools as would be likely to obtain the information which seemed at that time most needed. We |