PUBLIC SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. This article on school organization deals first with the kind, distribution and relation of schools in the community, second with the or ganization of the supervisory and teaching force in the system and in the individual school. The ordinary units of school organization are rural districts, townships, villages and cities. By far the most of the rural schools have but one teacher who instructs all the children who attend, dividing them into as many grades as seem desirable. A few rural schools have two teachers and in occasional instances a larger number is employed. The township system usually includes a number of rural schools of one or more departments and a larger cen trally located school where academic studies and perhaps industrial and homemaking courses are pursued. The proportions of the total num ber of pupils in the township registered in the outlying schools and in the central school re spectively vary greatly. In some instances few if any outlying schools are maintained and pupils are brought to the central school by carryalls or auto buses. In other cases only the pupils of high school age or those of the tipper grades and the high school, are brought to the central school, while the smaller children attend rural schools near their homes.
In order to explain most easily the school organization of communities of varying sizes, the development of a typical school system from village to city will be described. A small village usually maintains either a agradedzi school, that is, a school with teachers and pupils sufficient to maintain a full eight-grade organi zation, or a combined grade school and high school. In this way the term °high school') is sometimes used rather deceptively to denote a school in reality consisting of both high school and grades. As the village grows there are likely to be added outlying grade schools, at first small with the lower grades only, and later with complete grade organization. At about this time the high school is likely to he sepa rated from the grades and placed in a building adapted to its special needs. As the village de velops into a large city grade schools multiply and the number of high schools increases. Special high schools for industrial, commercial, homemaking, vocational instruction are added, or these lines of work form recognized depart ments of the regular high school. Grade schools
will be placed as the density of the population demands and high schools will be so located as to serve definite sections of the city. Unless the city develop beyond the half million mark there will probably not be more than one or at most two special high schools such as those just named, and these will be centrally located.
The development of the junior high school, a form of city school organization which at the time of writing is found in but comparatively few American villages and cities, seems likely to bring about within a period of years a gen eral reorganization of school systems. It is sufficient to say here that the junior high school contemplates the division of the 12 years of public school education into three periods, prob ably with one or the other of the following groupings: 6-3-3, or 6-2-4. There will be an elementary course of six years, a junior high school course of three or two years and a senior high school course of three or four years. This change would necessitate the placing of six year grade schools as needed, junior high schools as required as centres to which pupils from a number of elementary schools would come, and high schools in turn as centres to which the graduates of a number of junior high schools would come.
The chief administrative officer of a small school is the principal who has charge, under the direction of the local school trustee or trus tees and usually of the county or State school authorities, of the organization and instruction throughout the school. In small schools the principal gives much of his time to classroom instruction, but as the schools grow larger less time is given to instruction and more to super vision. Many principals in village high schools and nearly all principals of large village or city grade schools give all or essentially all of their time to supervisory duties. Although there is naturally much variation in this respect, it is seldom that a principal teaches more than a few hours weekly if he has the supervision of 15 to 20 teachers.