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To make the effort a success, aid is needed from the State.
Such aid is given in the sister States. A School Journal cir-
culating in all portions of the State will cause school ques-
tions to be disscussed in many households. The great and
beneficent principles which underlie the whole system of pop-
ular education, will be better understood, and the law,
through which the State is striving to discharge her duty to
the children, be fully explained.

Resolutions upon this subject were passed by the associa-
tion of Commissoners, as follows :

Resolved, That this association recognizes the importance
of a State educational and Family Journal, and that the
Presidents of the City and County Boards, be requested to
ascertain before February 18,1867, the number of subscribers
which can be secured and forward the result to E. S. Zevely.

Resolved, that an application signed by the President and
Secretary of the association, be presented to the General As-
sembly, for a subscription of fifty copies for each of the
Counties, and the City of Baltimore, to be circulated by the
City and County Boards.

SCHOOL HOUSES.

The State Board of Education has given much attention to
this subject, but in the absence of a law by which funds for
Building purposes can be collected, the work of improving
old and erecting new School houses has been very slow. At
the late special session of the General Assembly, a bill was
reported authorizing a County tax for erecting School houses,
but it was left among the unfinished business. Either a law
must be passed enabling Commissioners to build School
houses, or the work will depend upon the uncertain impulses
of private liberality.

During the year, 17 new houses have been erected, 206 re-
paired, and 68 furnished with good desks and seats, the
money being taken from regular School revenues. To accom-
plish this little, the School session was limited in some of the
counties to three terms, or to six months, the minimum period
required by the law. This plan was recommended for those
counties in which the school rooms were unfit for occupancy,
and in which revenue could be procured in no other way. It
seems to be a sound policy, for school work will be so much
more efficient in comfortable and convenient buildings as to
fully compensate in two years for all the loss of time, if it
be six months.

The honor of the State, as well as the health, comfort and
progress of the children demand a better class of School
nouses, well lighted, properly ventilated, neat and economi-
cal. To acquaint Commissioners with the style of such build-
ings, and enable them to build at the smallest cost, the State
Board prepared five sets of plans for school houses accommo-