of the year after, when they shall be more than doubled, and so on forever, and when by refusing to supply those wants, the school system shall be inadequate, unequal and unjust, those who desire to overthrow the system or to sweep it into the corrupted currents of partizan patronage, will find an easy victory.

In the present growth of this city, there are added to the number of children more than eight thousand every year of the proper age to attend school. A constant increase was foreseen and provided for by the framers of the school law, which provides :

"SECTION 3. It shall be the duty of the Board of Education to report to the Board of Supervisors an estimate of the amount....which will be required during the year....for purchasing, leasing and procuring sites, for erecting buildings, and for furnishing, fitting up, altering, enlarging and repairing the buildings under their charge, &c."

The law, it will be perceived, requires the present Board to report an estimate of what, in their opinion, their successors. the Board for the next year, will require, beyond the amount already provided by law.

The Board of Education does not desire, and cannot consent to neglect or violate the high trust committed to its care, nor refuse to perform what a statute of the State declares specifically and peremptorily to be its duty. It was thus compelled to insert in its estimate the items objected to by the Commissioners.

If the School system is to be maintained, it must be equal and just, and deservedly acceptable to all classes of the citizens. School-houses must be sufficient and comfortable, and convenient for the purposes of instruction according to the modes considered as most efficient and economical in the judgment of the Board of Education, and extended as the city increases.

The present School system began in 1842, and the Board of Education, from year to year, has deemed it wiser to come up to the complete supply of the educational wants of the city, by a constantly but gradually increasing extension of the School buildings, till each part of the city might, as far as practicable, enjoy the advantages of the system-as well the older portions as those newer parts that are stretching out so rapidly into the

suburbs. But the point of adequate supply has not yet been reached.

The late Public School Society had in charge and owned about half the School property, but for several years were compelled to devote their funds to maintaining their Schools, and to leave their School-houses without those repairs, alterations and extensions which they needed, and for want of which some of them had gone to decay. During the last year that Society transferred its property to the city, and its Schools to this Board, whereby the labors and responsibilities of this Board were more than doubled.

By the multiplication of tenant houses, the number of children in the compact parts of the city is vastly increased, and by our continued prosperity the compact part of the city is extending out into the fields as if by magic. All these neighborhoods have an equal right to the proper provision for the education of their children.

This Board has found that in some instances School accommodation may be greatly increased by making repairs and adding a story or wings to a comparatively small building; and in some instances by substituting a large and commodious building for a dilapidated, inconvenient and small edifice, on a site purchased while it was situated in the sparsely settled suburbs; and in some instances by the purchase of a new site and the erection of a new building. But in all these cases the Board of Education exercises no originating power. The applications must always come from and be sustained by the local officers, and the purchases and contracts be made by them. Such applications are constantly coming before the Board and cannot fail to come up in every year, and the experience of the past compels this Board to foresee them and to put them in their estimate, for in most cases the Board would be false to its trust if it did not grant them.

And such, as before remarked, are the items objected to by the Finance Commissioners, and the same law which compelled the Board to insert them in their estimate compels them to retain them till satisfactory reasons authorize their exclusion from the estimate.

The Committee, notwithstanding they are without the reasons which influenced the Finance Commissioners in selecting for

objection the particular items in question, are not without hope that the price of labor and materials during the next year may be lower than has been anticipated, and that a slightly diminished amount may be adequate to meet the applications which the Board will feel compelled to grant, and therefore recommend that the Board of Education reduce the amount objected to by the Commissioners by the deduction of $30,000, according to the following preamble and resolution.

Whereas, The estimate of the appropriations required by the Board of Education for 1855, required by law to be submitted to the Commissioness named in the 16th section of the act "further to amend the Charter of New York," passed April 12, 1853, has been duly submitted to said Commissioners, and they have disapproved the same and returned it with their objections to certain items therein specified, to the Board of Education; and whereas the said objections have been fully considered, and the said estimate reconsidered by the Board of Educationtherefore

Resolved, That the Board of Education adhere to their said original estimate submitted to said Commissioners, except the item for extending Primary Schools, being $20,000, and that for putting an additional story on School-house No. 7, being $10,000, as to which the objections of the Board of Commissioners prevail, and the same are stricken out.

E. C. BENEDICT,

THOMAS B. STILLMAN,
NELSON J. WATERBURY,
JAMES F. DE PEYSTER,
J. T. ADAMS,

ISAAC PHILLIPS,
CHARLES H. SMITH,

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 29, 1854.

Select Committee.

No. 41.

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION,

STATE OF NEW YORK.

BOARD OF EDUCATION,

CITY OF NEW YORK, DECEMBER 4, 1854.

Statement of the causes of the Deficiency in the revenues of the Board of Education for 1854, prepared by the Special Committee to which the subject was referred by the Board.

Printed by order of the Committee.

ALBERT GILBERT,

Clerk.