HIGH SCHOOL BOYS
SEARCH FOR SNAPS.
FLUNKERS MAKE THE ROUNDS
OF EASY TEACHERS.
Principals Want Something Done to
Make the Enrollment Stationary.
Must Plan Uniform Sys-
tem of Working.
With three large high schools from which to choose a course of study, the Kansas City boys who go to high school for the fun that there is in it, are working a little scheme that will sooner or later be nipped in the bud by the school principals or superintendents. These boys are making the rounds of the schools hunting for the "soft snaps" in the way of simple subjects and "easy" teachers. Those who were considered failures at the Manual Training high school last year and who thought that faculty had it in for them because the teachers objected to loafing, are registered at the Westport high or at the Central school. Failures from Central used to go to Manual and Manual failures went to Central. Now there are three faculties to work and the transferring scheme is in full swing.
"Boys of high school age are pretty smart fellows," Superintendent J. M. Greenwood said yesterday, "and they know how and where to work their schemes for easy study. Many of them have made the rounds of the high schools, looking over the ground. In a large high school it takes a year for them to be found out. And when they are discovered they move on. We have three large high schools now, and that means three years of easy times to them."
Superintendent Greenwood believes that the time is coming when the city will have to be districted as to manual training high schools and that this year something may have to be done in the transferring of teachers. Westport high school has a faculty of only forty-three teachers while the Manual Training high school has more than seventy. The Central high school, being purely academic, will won't be taken into account.
Even the principals are beginning to feel that something will have to be done to make the schools stationary as to enrollment. Principal E. D. Phillips of the Manual Training high school said yesterday that the present system of allowing pupils to attend any school they please will place the principals in embarrassing positions. If a principal prepares for 1,400 or 1,500 students and the enrollment falls short, it means that his teaching force, for the sake of economy, must be curtailed. On the other hand if he prepares for a small number of pupils and 1,400 or more enroll he will need extra teachers when it is too late to obtain them.
"The whole trouble," says Superintendent Greenwood, "is that the high schools are working too independently of each other and this winter the superintendents are going to get together and plan a uniform system of working and a uniform course of study."
