What's Wrong With Local Schools? Might It Be the 38 Students Per White Teacher or the 67 Students Per "Colored" Teacher? April 9, 1920

From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, April 9, 1920. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025812/1920-04-09/ed-1/seq-1/. Schools are overcrowded and banks won't lend them more money. Teachers in white schools average 37.5 pupils per teacher and teachers in "colored" schools average 66.7 pupils per teacher. So the city is going to bring in an expert from State University to explain why Pasquotank County's schools don't perform as well as the best schools in North Carolina. 

What’s Wrong With Schools? State Expert to Help Reach Solution to Grave Problem in City School

Dr. L.A. Williams for the School of Education at the State University will be in Elizabeth City next Monday and Tuesday to make a survey of the city’s public schools, and on Monday night at the court house he will make a public address in which he will make known what’s wrong with the schools and what to do about it.

This is a most important meeting and every one interested in putting our schools abreast of the best schools in the State should attend and hear what Dr. Williams has to say.

Our schools have reached a crisis in their history. There has always been an insufficient amount of money to run the schools as they should have been run, and in consequence, a large debt has been incurred which has injured the school’s credit with the banks, and they have refused to extend further credit.

The attendance at the schools has increased to such an extent that the schools have been overrun with students and the capacity of the buildings has been exhausted. A normal increase of attendance next year will be about 150 new students, and unless some buildings can be rented it will be impossible to take care of all the children of school age, and at that, there will be a shortage of funds to employ competent teachers.

It was the intention of the School board to ask for a bond issue to secure funds to erect another building this year, but in taking the preliminary steps for an election it was fund that an act of the legislature would be necessary before an election could be held, so this delays the building project another year.

There are now enrolled in the white schools 1,425 pupils and over 800 in the colored schools.

There are 38 teachers in the white schools and 12 in the colored.