STATE OF NEW-YORK. No. 10. IN ASSEMBLY, Jan. 13, 1847. ANNUAL REPORT Of the Superintendent of Common Schools. STATE OF NEW-YORK, SECRETARY'S OFFICE. Department of Common Schools. Hon. WM. C. HASBROUCK, Speaker of the Assembly. SIR-I herewith transmit the annual report, required by law, of the I am, very respectfully, Your obedient servant, N. S. BENTON. [Assembly No. 10.] 1 Stanford University Libraries REPORT. SECRETARY'S OFFICE, DEPARTMENT OF COMMON SCHOOLS. Albany, January 5, 1847. TO THE LEGISLATURE. The Superintendent of Common Schools, in compliance with the requisitions of the First Section of Article 1, Title 2, of Chapter 15, Part 1, of the Revised Statutes, relating to the common schools of this State, respectfully submits the following ANNUAL REPORT, which embraces the various subjects required to be laid before the Legislature. I. THE CONDITION OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS. Abstracts A, B, C, and D, herewith submitted, have been compiled from the official reports of the county superintendents of common schools, made in conformity to law and the regulations of the Department. Abstract A. comprises all the information and statistical facts reported by the trustees of school districts, and condensed by the town superintendents of common schools, in their reports filed in the offices of the county clerks of their respective counties, for the use of the county superintendents, from which the reports of these officers are made out and transmitted to this department. In addition to the information thus obtained, the town superintendents give the amount of the public money received by them from all sources during the year ending on the date of their reports, the manner in which the same has been apportioned for the current year, and the amount of local funds, if any, received by them respectively during the same period. That portion of the abstract comprising the substance of the trustees' reports, exhibits the condition of the schools, for the year ending on the 31st of December, 1845, and the moneys received and expended for school purposes during the same period. The town superintendents make their reports on the first day of July in each year succeeding the date of the trustees' reports; consequently the abstract, in respect to the number of school districts, the receipt and apportionment of the public school moneys for the past year, closes on the first day of July, 1846, and embraces the school moneys received and expended by the trustees in the year 1846, which will be accounted for by them in their reports at the close of that year. The fifty-nine organized counties in the State, contained, on the first day of July last, nine hundred and twenty towns and wards; and the whole number of organized school districts, the school houses of which were situated in the town or ward reported, was, on that day, eleven thousand and eight; of which eight thousand three hundred and twenty seven were whole districts, and five thousand three hundred and forty-eight were parts of joint districts, composed of territory of adjoining towns. The trustees of eight thousand one hundred and ninety-three whole districts, and of five thousand two hundred and seven parts of joint districts, have filed reports with the town clerks, pursuant to law. There were, therefore, one hundred and thirty-four of the former, and one hundred and forty-one of the latter, from which no reports were received; showing about the same number of delinquent or non-reporting districts, as occurred in 1844. The delinquent districts appear, by former reports from this department, to be about one in fifty of the whole number, for the years ending on the 31st of December, 1843 and 1844; and at the close of the year 1845, the proportion remained very nearly the same. The last annual report from this office shows there were, in the nine hundred and eleven towns and wards then in the State, eleven thousand and eighteen school districts, the school houses being in the same towns and wards; eight thousand four hundred and nineteen whole districts, and five thousand three hundred and eleven parts of joint districts; and, comparing the results collected from the reports of the last year, with those of 1845, we have a decrease of ten districts, the school houses of which were situated in the same town or ward; and also a decrease of ninety-two whole districts, and an increase of thirty-seven parts of joint districts; allowing for the city of New-York one hundred and seventy-two whole districts, and estimating, or rather placing these districts in the column of those having the school-houses within the same town or ward. This is the only instance, save one in 1843, where the returns exhibit a diminution in the number of school districts in the State, for a period of more than thirty-one years; and, were not the causes well understood and susceptible of very satisfactory explanation, these facts might justly induce serious apprehensions, that our fellow citizens were becoming indifferent to any system of public instruction, and averse to the maintenance of our common schools. The reports of 1843 show a less number of school districts in the State, by eighteen, than those of 1842. The diminution does not much exceed one to each county in the State, and is about as one to every ninety of the whole districts reported in 1845. Actuated by a laudable desire to elevate the standard of instruction in our common schools, and encouraged therein by this department, the patrons of the schools, and the officers charged with the duty of executing the law in this respect, have been successfully endeavoring, by consolidating old and feeble districts, by dissolving others of like character without school houses worthy to be so called, and annexing the territory of such dissolved districts to others adjoining, to alleviate the evils they were almost daily encountering from the weakness and inefficacy of the existing organizations. More wealth and a larger assessment roll are thus brought together, and contribute to defray the expenses of schools, having an increased list of pupils, under the direction of teachers "more apt and learned," and in every respect better fitted to discharge the duties of their grave and important employment. New-York, with all the advantages resulting from a genial climate and luxuriant soil, from her commercial superiority and great facilities for manufacturing, from her unrivalled means of transportation to and from the tide waters and the western and northern lakes, and from the railroads by which she is encircled, has not, during the last five years, increased in population so largely as might have been anticipated, nor in the ratio that the excess of births over deaths, in the year ending on the first day of July, 1845, would have given, had she retained on her own soil the population of 1840. Her young and middle aged men have been, and still are, seeking homes and seating themselves on the new lands in the west, performing a severe pilgrimage, and enduring toil, privation, and disease, for the benefit of posterity. A very considerable portion of our population has, for some years past, been in a state of transition, and while the agricultural districts have remained nearly stationary since 1840, the commercial and manufacturing cities and villages, and the towns bordering upon our great internal navigable commu |