Biggest Superintendency

New Yorkers marvelled last week at a school board which did not seem to know the age of the city's Superintendent of Schools; and at the Superintendent himself, Dr. William James O'Shea, who did not seem to care. Superintendent O'Shea, according to his Who's Who biography, will be 69 this week. But the school retirement board lists him as 70, retirement age. and last week announced that he would be automatically retired next Jan. i on a pension of $10,000 to $12,500. Said Dr. O'Shea: "The retirement board has it a year earlier and I'm going to let it go at that. I am not going to argue the matter."

Parents immediately wanted to know who is in line for Dr. O'Shea's job, one of the city's best-paid ($25,000 a year minus a temporary $5,000 slash) and potentially one of the most useful. Dr. O'Shea has been a public schoolman for 46 years. He was appointed Superintendent in 1924, succeeding Dr. William L. Ettinger who was politically ousted by Mayor John F. ("Red Mike") Hylan. Dr. O'Shea is kindly, gentle, petulant when criticized, sometimes in poor health and now poor in eyesight. A good Roman Catholic, he often was closeted with New York's Patrick Cardinal Hayes. Superintendent O'Shea has publicly said: "I am no glutton for power." The two men most talked of to succeed him are not so minded. They are Deputy Superintendent Harold George Campbell, a suave, hard-working Republican, experienced in high schools, good friend of President George J. Ryan of the Board of Education; and big, bluff Associate Superintendent William E. Grady, elementary schoolman, a Tammany Democrat but one respected by non-partisans for his force and independence. If the Board of Education elects either of these it will be with full knowledge that they favor a vigorous superintendency and not one dependent upon the Board of Superintendents (at present composed of seven, with two vacancies).

In New York's school system are 1,113,000 day pupils, taught by 36,000 teachers. The Board of Education's budget,, currently some $130,000,000, is the city's biggest. School sites, buildings and equipment are valued at some $500,000,000. A New York child may go to school without spending any money at all: teachers and other educational employes, with some help from the city, maintain a lunch fund which amounts to some $1,500,000 annually. When Jewish holidays fall on school days, the schools lose $500,000 annually, New York State aid being apportioned on the basis of daily instruction and attendance. New York City provides classes for the blind, deaf, crippled, tuberculous, cardiac, mentally slow. There are classes in Americanization, in vocations, by day and by night. East Side moppets who have never before seen a cornstalk may help till an East Side school-garden. From 1920 to 1930 New York opened new schools at the average rate of one every 13 days (there are now 1,000). A new course for all schoolboys as well as girls is one in sewing which Superintendent O'Shea introduced.

Though it is the world's largest, New York's school system is by no means the finest. Principals who do not pass enough pupils are criticized by the politician superiors. At least one-third of the New York pupils entering high school are inadequately prepared or simply incapable of the work. District Superintendent John L. Tildsley tested 7,000 commercial high school pupils, discovered 70% to 78% could not pass elementary English, arithmetic and geography. Too, the New York school system, containing more well-paid jobs than any other department, is top-heavy with inefficiency and diffused responsibility and shot through with politics (the Board of Education is appointed by the Mayor, the Superintendents elected by the Board). Many a civic group has supported bills to have appointments to high-salaried supervisory posts put on a merit basis, to no avail. Like many another city New York has had its school-site scandals, notably one in which a $27,000 plot amid factories and gas tanks was bought for $240,604. Brooklyn's Boss John H. McCooey was reported to hold a mortgage on the land. Boss McCooey's sister Margaret was on a committee of associate superintendents which recommended the site.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.