138

QUEEN ANNE COUNTY.

Centreville, Nov. 12, 1866,
REV. L. VAN BOKELEN.

Sir:

All the statistical information yon require, may be found
in the blank forms furnished by your Board, now filled up
and in your possession. Nothing has been done toward
establishing a High School, except publishing in our week-
ly County papers, the law upon the subject, for the inform-
ation of the people. We have asked for proposals from the
different districts of the County, but so far no response has
town made to oar request. We have kept our Schools in oper-
ation during the entire School year, except in one or two ca-
ses. when they were temporarily closed for want of scholars;
and have closed up the financial affairs of the Board, after
paying two or three small debts left by the old Board, en-
tirely out of debt and with a surplus of a few dollars in the
hands of our Treasurer. We therefore have a fair start for
ita current year. We have however, been entirely unable
to improve the condition of our school houses. They are
as we found them, except that in a few instances, some

slight but absolutely necessary repairs, costing but little,
tore been made. Whenever I hare had an opportunity I
have urged upon the people to whom I have had access in
ray official visits to the schools and at other times, the great
importance of comfortable houses for the use of the children
of the County, and of our utter inability to furnish them, for
want of funds, hut all my appeals have been ineffective, and
nothing has been done. If we could get one District only' to
build a rateable house and furnish it with such furniture as
a school house needs, I am almost sure that others would
soon follow the good example. Every body acknowledges
that we need good houses, hut nobody seems disposed to do
anything to enable us to furnish them. I think that the
greatest obstacle in our way in this and in other cases is the
want of concern in the minds of parents about the education

of their children. I form this opinion from the very bad at-
tendanceof scholars in schools. Though, except in the
sickly season, the number of scholars enrolled is sufficient to
make a good school, the number in daily attendance will
hardly average fifty per cent, of those upon the Register.
We have strong advocates of the new system among the
most intelligent men among the County, and it has its ene-
mies too. I find among its strongest friends, the parents of
those pupils, who have been kept regularly at school and
who have seen its advantages in the same advancement of
their children, and its enemies are those whose children do